Marital Instability: A Comparative Study of China and Taiwan

Utilizing the East Asian Social Survey (EASS), this study investigates the determinants of marital instability in China and Taiwan in the later part of the 1990s. Drawing insights from the resource and gender perspectives, the central goal of this study is to use advanced quantitative techniques to explore how resources, gendered marital roles, and gender ideologies affect marital instability in these two societies. Results from multivariate statistical analyses suggest that the effects of resources, gender roles, and gender ideologies on marital instability vary modestly across the societies and the two gender groups. While the overall findings lent limited support to the resource-based theory, gender ideologies and to a lesser extent, gender roles, emerged as the most consistent predictors of marital instability in China and Taiwan. Data limitations and directions for future research are discussed.