Exploring how people negotiate and reconcile, construct and re-construct their distinctive gender and ethnic identities in a cross-cultural context, Hu examines what happens when two distinct cultures meet at the intimate interface of marriage and family. Chinese-British Intermarriage reveals how gender and ethnic identities intersect in distinctive ways in shaping the lived experiences of intermarried couples. Through the kaleidoscope of first-generation Chinese-British inter-ethnic families in the UK, the book brings together family, gender, migration and ethnic studies, reflecting on ongoing social processes such as individualisation and globalisation.
The ways in which partners manage their money provide important clues to gender inequality in and the nature of couple relationships. Analyzing data from nationally representative surveys ( N = 11,730 couples), I examine changes across British cohorts born between the 1920s and 1990s in their household financial management, and how the changes vary across individuals and couples occupying differential income positions. The results show divergent, nuanced cohort trends toward gender equality in couples' money management. Across successive cohorts of low-earning women, there has been a subtle relaxation in the form of male control, reflected in a decrease in the proportion of men adopting "back-seat" management by retaining the majority of the couple's money while delegating the chore of managing daily expenses to their partners. By contrast, the empowerment of high-earning women is reflected primarily in an individualization of financial management, evident in a cohort decrease in joint financial management and an increase in independent management. The trend of individualization is particularly prominent among couples in which both partners have equally high earnings. The findings provide new insights into and important extensions of the theorization of gender relations in and the individualization of couple relationships.
Family changes in China are characterized by a dual rise in marital disruption and remarriage. However, the implications of these changes for child well-being remain understudied. I analyze data from the 2015 China Education Panel Survey to profile and explain well-being disparities between children in intact, disrupted, and remarried families. Child well-being is poorer in disrupted than in intact families. Remarriage, particularly of both parents, is associated with further harm to children's well-being. Mothers' remarriage is associated with a broader range and greater extent of damage to children's well-being than that of fathers. Neither social selection nor economic and non-pecuniary resources explain poorer child well-being in disrupted families and stepfamilies than in intact families. Household structure only explains why children in disrupted families, but not in stepfamilies, fare less well than those in intact families. Variations in child well-being with parents' marital status are consistently explained by poor parent–child relations and parental conflict. Reflecting on the theories of selectivity, resource deprivation, and structural instability, the findings highlight the need to consider China's distinctive sociocultural and institutional settings in configuring the implications of ongoing family changes for child well-being.
Analyzing new nationwide data from the Understanding Society COVID-19 survey (N = 10,336), this research examines intersecting ethnic and native–migrant inequalities in the impact of COVID-19 on people's economic well-being in the UK. The results show that compared with white non-migrants, black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) migrants in the UK are more likely to experience job loss during the COVID-19 lockdown, while BAME natives are less likely to enjoy employment protection such as furloughing. Although white non-migrants are more likely to reduce their work hours during the COVID-19 pandemic than BAME migrants, they are less likely to experience income loss and face increased financial hardship during the pandemic than BAME migrants. The findings show that the pandemic exacerbates entrenched socio-economic inequalities along intersecting ethnic and native–migrant lines. They urge governments and policy makers to place racial justice at the center of policy developments in response to the pandemic.
AbstractObjective:This research investigates the role played by household financial organization in configuring the housework participation of women and men and in moderating the influence of earnings on housework.Background:Existing research has focused on the ways in which earnings shape gendered power and housework performance in couple relationships. However, no research has examined how household financial organization intervenes between the receipt of earnings in the labor market and the performance of housework at home.Method:Two‐stage least squares regressions were used to analyze data from Waves 2 and 4 of the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study (N = 6,070 couples).Results:Management of household finances is associated with an increase in housework time for both men and women, whereas control of household financial decisions reduces men's but not women's housework time. Women's individual earnings reduce their housework time only when they can access these earnings. Men's relative earnings reduce their housework time when they or their partners manage the couple's earnings, but not when partners manage their earnings independently, supporting both resource bargaining theory and gendered resources theory. Women's individual earnings and men's relative earnings reduce their housework time only when they have partial or full control of household financial decisions.Conclusion:The management and control of household finances influence the time spent by women and men on housework in ways distinct from yet equally as important as those of earnings. Household financial organization is a key premise moderating when and how gender equality in the public sphere helps promulgate gender equality at home.
Differentiated gender roles in adulthood are rooted in one's gender role socialization. In order to understand the persistence of gender inequalities in the domestic sphere, we need to examine the gendered patterns of children's housework time. Although researchers have identified behavior modeling as a major mechanism of gender role reproduction and characterized gender socialization as a contextually embedded process, few have investigated contextual variation in behavior modeling, particularly in non‐Western developing countries. Analyzing data from the China Family Panel Studies 2010, the author examined the differences in behavior modeling between boys and girls age 10–15 from 2‐parent families (N = 1,903) in rural and urban China. The results revealed distinctive gendered interplays in the way parental housework and employment behavior helps shape children's housework time. This analysis is a crucial illustration of how the distinctive sociocultural contexts of rural and urban China moderate the effects of housework‐behavior modeling on intergenerational gender role socialization.
Analyzing event history data from the 2010 China Family Panel Studies and 13 qualitative interviews, we examine the complex and gendered relationship between family relations and remarriage in China. Distinct roles are played by the presence of preschool, school-age, and adult children in configuring the remarriage of women and men after divorce and after widowhood. The remarriage of widows but not divorcées is positively associated with the presence of parents and siblings. Remarriage is more likely in the presence of large extended families. Whereas single and remarried divorcé(e)s equally provide care to their children, such care provision is less likely among remarried than single widow(er)s. Compared with their single counterparts, remarried divorcé(e)s and particularly widow(er)s are less likely to receive care from their children. We underline the importance of considering the "linked lives" of family members and comparing distinct life course circumstances in the study of remarriage. We demonstrate that remarriage is far from an "individualized" institution and that the state's privatization of marriage seems to reinforce the "familialization" of remarriage practices in China.
Abstract Research on gender ideology and housework tends to treat gender ideology as an individual characteristic but has paid less attention to the interactional process in which both spouses' gender ideologies jointly shape their housework time. Analysing longitudinal dyadic data from the United Kingdom (1993–2020) using the actor-partner interdependence model, we examine the relationship between both spouses' gender ideologies and their housework time and how the relationship varies with the spouses' relative income. The results show that traditional gender ideology is associated with longer housework time for wives but shorter housework time for husbands. While wives' gender ideologies are more closely associated with their own housework time, husbands' ideologies are more closely associated with their wives' housework time. Moreover, compared with the husband's housework time, the wife's housework time is more susceptible to both spouses' ideologies, especially when both spouses align in traditional ideology and when the husband's relative income is high. Our findings highlight the value of a relational perspective and provide new insights into how interactional dimensions of gender ideology intersect with relative resources to shape spouses' gendered housework time in different-sex couples.
Driven by growing demands for environmental protection and sustainable development, green finance has gained increasing attention, evolving from a peripheral topic to a core research area. Research in green finance primarily focuses on financial products, services, and policies, analyzing their impacts on society, markets, and listed companies. Through a systematic literature screening and analysis process, this study reviewed the existing body of literature on green finance, with a particular emphasis on key areas such as green financing, green financial technology, green financial products and derivatives, green building, financial reform and innovation in green finance, and carbon trading markets. Using keywords such as "green finance", "green insurance", "green securities", and "green investment", we identified 15,487 relevant publications from 2014 to 2023 across multiple databases. We then applied Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) to cluster these documents, identifying core subfields and conducting a detailed bibliometric analysis. Our results reveal a geographic shift in green finance research prominence from the U.S. to China, with a thematic shift from green building and energy efficiency to green bonds and climate finance. Through our analysis, we provide policy recommendations informed by these findings. This study's unique contribution lies in its systematic extension of bibliometric analysis into emerging subfields of green finance, such as green financial technology and carbon trading markets, both of which are becoming increasingly critical. Additionally, this study offers valuable insights into the evolving landscape of green finance research, bridging the gap between academic research and industry practice and providing actionable policy recommendations for stakeholders across different sectors.
Objectives Living apart together (LAT)—intimate partners living in separate households—is a common partnership type among older adults. Although the mental health benefits of intimate partnerships are widely documented, how LAT relates to older adults' mental health remains understudied.
Methods Analyzing Waves 3–13 (2011–2023) of the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study, we use fixed effects models to examine (1) how older adults' mental health varies with LAT, marriage, cohabitation, and singlehood (never married, widowed, divorced/separated); and (2) how transitions into and out of LAT, compared to marriage and cohabitation, relate to older adults' mental health.
Results Overall, older adults have better mental health when LAT than when single, but little difference in mental health is found across LAT, cohabitation and marital partnerships. While older singles moving into LAT experience mental health improvements, those moving from LAT to singlehood suffer mental health declines. Although the mental health benefits of moving into LAT are smaller than those of entering cohabitation and particularly marriage, exiting LAT is associated with smaller mental health declines compared to exiting cohabitation and marriage. No statistically significant gender difference is found in the mental health benefits of LAT.
Discussion The findings underscore LAT as a key form of family diversity in later life. They problematize the long-held ideal of coresidence in couple relationships and its role in sustaining older adults' mental health. They encourage researchers to go beyond the household as a default unit of analysis and examine interhousehold intimate connections in older adults' lives.
