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Marriage-squeezed men in China suffer social discrimination

Lisa Eklund has co-authored the article ”Reacting to social discrimination? Men's individual and social risk behaviors in the context of a male marriage squeeze in rural China”, published in Social Science & Medicine.

In China, a shortage of marriageable women is resulting in many single men, some of which engage in risky and potentially hazardous activities. The study by Lisa Eklund, senior lecturer at the Department of Sociology at Lund University, and Xueyan Yanga and Sasa Wang at School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi'an Jiaotong University in China, explores “whether social discrimination is associated with marriage-squeezed men's engagement in the behaviours that threaten their own wellbeing and community safety.”

Based on data collected in Chaohu City and 380 villages across 18 Chinese provinces, the researchers argue that the social discrimination marriage-squeezed men experience, due to being unmarried, triggers them to engage in risky behaviours that threaten themselves and others – such as alcohol abuse, frequent gambling, and interpersonal conflicts. “It is necessary to develop and implement policies aimed at creating a friendly and tolerant social environment for marriage-squeezed men,” the authors conclude.

 

Read the article at ScienceDirect.

Lisa Eklund’s personal page