Age at First Marriage and Divorce Risk: A Perspective Based on the Social Clock Theory

Ting Yang, Peking University
Tianli Liu, Peking University

The relationship between age at first marriage and divorce risk has long been a topic of interest in demography. This study utilized longitudinal data collected by six waves of the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) from 2010 to 2020, resulting in a final sample of 39,243 individuals (19,003 men and 20,240 women). The samples were categorized into five cohorts based on the time period for their first marriage, and the common marriage age in each period was calculated using data from the China Population Census Yearbook (2020). Then early and late ages for the first marriage were identified. We used survival analysis methods to explore the relation between divorce risk and marriage age. Additionally, we analyzed marriage age using traditional categorical methods. The results reveal that the further people's age at first marriage deviates from the common age, the faster they divorce. However, in the traditional categorical analysis, only the early marriage group had a significantly higher risk of divorce.

Keywords: Families, Unions and Households

See paper.