The Marriage Squeeze for Aboriginal Men in Taiwan: The Impact of Ethnic Intermarriage Between Aborigines and Han Chinese People

Before 1970, the main stream of ethnic intermarriage in Taiwan was the elder veteran from Mainland China marrying aboriginal women, but the pattern of ethnic intermarriage between aborigines and Han Chinese has been changed due to a series of social and economic transformation. In the past three decades, aborigines moved from their native villages to large metropolitan areas increasing and their spatial segregation from Han Chinese was decreased substantially. Accompanied by the population redistribution, the intermarriage rate of aborigines and Han Chinese increased, and meanwhile, the likelihood of marrying for aboriginal men declined. Although men and women both leave their hometown, the shortage of marriageable partners only appeared in specific local marriage markets, i.e., their hometown areas in the mountain or the peripheral southeastern coast. The spatial distribution of indigenous population become unequal and sex ratio is highly skewed in some areas due to the migration selectivity of sex and education. The propensity of migration of aboriginal women is higher than men and the well-educated tend to stay in urban areas where they are more likely to marry Han Chinese. With the social constraint of the marriage gradient and mating threshold, the less educated aboriginal men who stayed in hometown are compelled to stay single due to the shortage of marriageable women in local marriage market. Using the 2000 Taiwan population census, we try to reveal the complex relation among intermarriage, migration and marriage market. The ultimate goal is to provide some empirical evidences to revalue the impact of ethnic intermarriage in the perspective of marriage squeeze.