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Title: Housewife, Gold Miss, and Equal: The Evolution of Educated Womens Role in Asia and the U.S.

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2012

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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 mens preference for their wives household services has diminished less rapidly and is slowed by womens 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 mothers education (and employment) and her sons 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 husbands 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.

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Authors: Hwang, Jisoo

Publisher: Harvard University

Data Collections: IPUMS USA, IPUMS Time Use - ATUS

Topics: Education, Family and Marriage, Gender

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