Category: 经济、IT观察与思考

今天例行的刷Marginal Revolution，果然发现一篇比较好玩的paper：

Housewife, “Gold Miss,” and Equal: The Evolution of Educated Women’s Role in Asia and the U.S.

简而言之呢，就是作者在好奇，为什么亚洲国家高学历的黄金剩女越来越多？嘻嘻，这也是作者Tyler Cowen 的Job Market Paper。虽然数据不涉及中国，但是眼瞅着韩国和日本现在的景象大概就是中国几十年后的必经之路，所以看看也是挺赏心悦目尤其是有借鉴意义的。

图片与正文几乎无关...

我就勤劳的翻译一下摘要吧：

自上世纪70年代中期以来，美国拥有大学学历的女士结婚或曾经结婚的比例、较之于教育程度稍逊的女士，在逐渐升高。然而有趣的是，与此同时亚洲的发达国家该比例却在降低——也就是说出现来越来越多的“黄金剩女”。本文认为，亚洲近几十年的快速发展和两代人之间的择偶观念传递共同造就了该现象。
经济发展带来了更多拥有大学学历的女性，从而增加了高学历女性供给；然而与此同时，男性对其妻子家务劳动的需求减少的却比较缓慢，尤其是受到他们母亲在家中角色的影响。（换成人话就是，现代女性在进步，而男性的择偶观依旧停留在找保姆阶段，尤其是在婆婆的观念中...）。本文中，我发现一个正向的工资刺激、较之于缓慢的工资增长，会造成婚姻市场中受教育女性和男性更大的不匹配（换成人话就是，女性工资涨得快结果择偶越来越难）。我使用了如下三个数据集来检验这样的结论：the Japanese General Social Survey, the American Time Use Survey, and the U.S. Census and American Community Survey.日本的数据显示，母亲的教育和工作程度会影响到他儿子的择偶观；在美国，亚洲女性家务劳动的时间和其丈夫母国的女性劳动参与率呈负相关；最后，日韩裔的大学毕业女生在美国婚姻市场有着更多的选择——她们更可能嫁给美国人，而与此同时日韩男生则没有此优势，并且这样的性别间差异在出生于外国的人群中更为明显（较之于出生于美国）

Abstract: The fraction of U.S. college graduate women who ever marry has increased relative to less educated women since the mid-1970s. In contrast, college graduate women in developed Asian countries have had decreased rates of marriage, so much so that the term “Gold Misses” has been coined to describe them. This paper argues that the interaction of rapid economic growth in Asia combined with the intergenerational transmission of gender attitudes causes the “Gold Miss” phenomenon. Economic growth has increased the supply of college graduate women, but men’s preference for their wives’ household services has diminished less rapidly and is slowed by women’s role in their mothers’ generation. Using a dynamic model, I show that a large positive wage shock produces a greater mismatch between educated women and men in the marriage market than would gradual wage growth. I test the implications of the model using three data sets: the Japanese General Social Survey, the American Time Use Survey, and the U.S. Census and American Community Survey. Using the Japanese data, I find a positive relationship between a mother’s education (and employment) and her son’s gender attitudes. In the U.S., time spent on household chores among Asian women is inversely related to the female labor force participation rate in husband’s country of origin. Lastly, college graduate Korean and Japanese women in the U.S. have greater options in the marriage market. They are more likely to marry Americans than Korean and Japanese men do, and this gender gap is larger among the foreign born than the U.S. born.

总而言之这个逻辑就是：

• 随着经济的快速增长，高学历女性越来越多，而与此同时高学历男性的择偶观依旧停留在他们上一辈的观念（要求老婆在家更多做家务），就算移民到美国了依旧如此，所以造成了高端女性“被剩女”；
• 此外如果亚裔女性到了美国，她们更容易嫁“美国佬”，而亚裔男性则很少娶西方女性。
• 不过那些出生长大在美国的就没有这么明显的现象...

还是蛮好玩的是不是？我看完了之后觉得优秀的女孩子们唯一的出路就是——好好读书，跑到美国，嫁美国人...不要对本国的男士抱太高期望...汗。或者，谁来向男同胞们呼吁一下——你们是娶老婆，不是娶保姆！哈哈...

另外扫了一眼下面的评论，给出了一些蛮好玩的统计数字:

“The marriage competition is fierce, and statistically, women hold the cards. Given the nation’s gender imbalance, an outgrowth of a cultural preference for boys and China’s stringent family-planning policies, as many as 24 million men could be perpetual bachelors by 2020, according to the report.”

预计到2020年中国大约有2400万单身汉...（重男轻女+一胎政策的恶果）