Spousal-residence separation among Chinese young couples

Spousal-residence separation has become a serious social problem in China since the Cultural Revolution. Apart from housing shortages, the government's migration control, through the restriction on urban-household registration, is a main contributor to the separation. Based on the microdata of the 1987 National Population Survey, we find that the variation in spousalresidence separations among Chinese young couples in the mid-1980s is well explained by personal and household factors within a multivariate model. The separations were aggravated by migrations for the reasons of employment or education. Although marriage migrations reduced the number of separations, those who had been married for a short period of time (particularly newlyweds) were more prone to be separated. It is ironic that the higher a person's level of education, the greater the tendency for them to suffer the pain of spousal-residence separation. Household status could also be a very important factor: the lower the household status of a married individual, the more likely that he (or she) would be separated from their spouse.