Post on 22-May-2020
transcript
Title: The Effects of Husband’s SES on International Marriage Migrant Partner’s
Health and Life Satisfaction in South Korea
Daesung Choi
a, Myungsoon Yoo
b, Youngtae Cho
b, Sanglim Lee
c, Gabriela Sanchez-Soto
a
a Department of Demography, University of Texas at San Antonio
b The Graduate School of Public Health at Seoul National University
c The Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs
Abstract. The present study examines the effects of Korean husband’s socioeconomic
status (SES) on international migrant wife’s self-reported health (SRH) and life satisfaction in
South Korea. Earlier studies show that spouse’s SES is an important factor for the respondent’s
health-related outcomes. Due to their low SES and the commercialized international marriage
process, migrant female spouses are presumed to have a high dependence on their Korean
husbands and therefore suffer a resultantly unequal relationship within the marriage. Thus, we
expect that the SES of the husband plays a significant role in determining marriage migrant’s
health and life satisfaction. The data to be used is drawn from the National Survey on
Multicultural Families 2009, conducted in Korea. This study analyzes Chinese, Vietnamese,
Filipino, Japanese and Korean Chinese female marriage migrants aged 14 and over, living in
Korea in 2009 (n=49,087). To address the independent effects of Korean husband’s SES, we
include three dimensions of covariates: foreign wife’s characteristics, Korean husband’s
characteristics and couple’s characteristics. The results from logistic regression models suggest
that there are significant disparities of SRH among female migrant partners in relation to the
Korean husband’s educational attainment even after adjusting for all other covariates, and this
effect is greater than that of the migrant women’s own educational attainment; suggesting the
Husband’s education and employment status have a positive effect on the foreign wife’s life
satisfaction, but the migrant wife’s own education was negatively associated with their life
satisfaction. There is significant interaction effect between duration of marriage and educational
difference between the couple; when migrant women have a lower educational attainment they
are more likely to show worse SRH and life satisfaction. Therefore future research on health
intervention policies aimed at international marriage migrants, should take into account the
husband’s characteristics.
Background
During the last few decades, countries in East and South East Asia have experienced dramatic
increases in international marriage migration, and it has become a highly significant type of migration
flow within the region (Jones and Shen 2008; Wang 2007). In particular, South Korea (referred to below
as ‘Korea’), Taiwan, Japan and Singapore have been the major immigrant-receiving countries, accepting a
steady increase in migrants from such international marriages since 1980 (Jones and Shen 2008). Among
these countries, the rate of increasing migration into Korea from international marriage is considerable.
According to the Korean survey of 2011, 11,605 marriages were registered as international marriages in
2000, a figure representing about three percent of all marriages in the country, but by 2010 this figure had
increased to 34,235, or almost 11% of total number of marriages for that year (Statistic Korea, 2011).
With the growing influx of marriage migrants into Korea, several characteristic marriage migration trends
emerged between Korea and other major sending countries in East and South East Asia. First, the largest
share of international marriages is between Korean males and foreign females, showing the feminization
of international migration. Until the 1990s most international marriages in Korea were Korean brides
being married to foreign males. However after the 1990s, for various reasons including changes in
Korea’s population structure and diplomatic relations, cross-border marriages in recent years have been
dominated by female migrants coming into Korea; the proportion of marriages between Korean men and
foreign women constituting about 77% of the total number of international marriages in 2010 (Kim 2008c;
Lee, Seol and Cho 2006). The second characteristic aspect is that the majority of migrating women who
marry Korean males come from less developed countries in South East Asia, such as Vietnam, the
Philippines and rural China (Jones and Shen 2008; Kim 2008c; Lee 2008; Lee, Seol and Cho 2006).
As the number of international marriages between Korean men and foreign women increased, the
health implications and issues connected to migration that are specific to women have received growing
attention from both Korean policy makers and scholars. Of particular interest has been the fact that
foreign women who marry Korean spouses are likely to migrate at young ages (they were, on average, 24
years at the time of marriage in 2009) and that these brides frequently begin childbearing shortly after
migration (Jeong et al. 2009; Korea 2011). Since Korean society has experienced an ongoing period of
low fertility and a resulting decrease in its labor force population, the increased influx of international
migrant women, and their subsequent offspring, will inevitably affect the population structure of Korea in
new and dynamic ways (Yang 2010). However recent statistics and literature consistently demonstrates
that female marriage migrants in Korea are likely to suffer from various health-related problems, such as
poor access to health care services due to severe poverty (Korea Ministry of Health, 2008), acculturative
stress (Kim et al. 2010) and low life satisfaction (Park, Park and Kim 2007). Given that maternal health is
highly associated with fetal health and later child health outcomes, the problems of health and stress
among marriage migrant women become a crucial issue to consider (Lee, Lee and Kim 2012b).
Health of marriage migrant women and husband’s SES
As immigrants, marriage migrants face many barriers to healthcare in Korea which native-born
women would not experience, including a poor understanding of the healthcare systems and a lack of
social support and thus, the social determinants affecting the health of the female marriage migrant group
as a whole may be more complex than for the native population (Lee, Lee and Kim 2012b). Unlike
migrants with only a temporary legal status, marriage migrants, voluntarily or not, gradually integrate into
both the larger Korean society and its household culture while forming their new family units. Naturally
among health predictors for migrant wives, those specifically related to their own background
characteristics, and others related to the characteristics of their husbands, or the families they join in
Korea might be important. In this paper, we explore the role that the husband’s characteristics play in
regard to their wives’ health outcomes. In fact, many empirical and theoretical studies in Western
countries have explored the influence of partner’s socioeconomic status (SES) on own health and health
behaviors. Despite a few differences in the results based on research contexts, these studies document
consistent findings that a person’s socioeconomic characteristics are significantly and independently
associated with the spouse’s health outcomes (Martikainen 1995; Monden et al. 2003; Moser, Pugh and
Goldblatt 1988; Van Berkel and De Graaf 1995). For instance, Moser and colleagues (1988) investigated
inequality in the mortality of women in England using Census data and reported that those women whose
husbands have non-manual jobs show a decreased mortality in comparison to those marrying husbands in
manual jobs. Despite past studies contributions to the subject of health and partner relationships, there is a
limitation in postulating similar such relationships between couples in contemporary contexts. This is
because much of the research examining the influence of spouses and health was conducted during the
1980s and 1990s, when female labor force participation was much less common, and so the husbands’
SES provided a more reliable measure of the wives’ SES and health than that of themselves (Martikainen
1995). Also, in Korea, as with other industrialized countries, gender equality and women’s social
participation has increased. For instance; in 2011 the proportion of the dual-earner couples reached about
44% of all households, and this figure was almost 60% for households headed by individuals 15 to 40
years old (Statistics Korea, 2011). Therefore in present day Korean society, the husbands’ SES may no
longer be an accurate indication of the wives’ SES and wives’ health outcomes in the case of native-born
couples. But, in the case of multicultural families with foreign brides, relationships are more likely to
follow a patriarchal family structure in which the foreign wives’ are highly dependent on their husbands,
both economically and psychologically. Therefore, even if the framework from earlier studies may no
longer explain the reality of Korean-Korean partner relationships, it may still have some relevance in the
case of multicultural families with foreign brides.
The high dependence of foreign wives on their native-born husbands is facilitated in part by each
marital partner’s motivation to enter into an international marriage. Regarding the purpose of marriage,
prior quantitative and qualitative studies show that whether women migrated to Korea for the purpose of
marriage or seeking job opportunities, foreign women are largely motivated to marry Korean males out of
economic necessity (Kim et al. 2006; Lee, Seol and Cho 2006). As mentioned, foreign women who were
involved in the international marriage migration are likely to come from low income countries and these
women are motivated by economic reasons, for instance, to escape poverty in their home countries,
improve their quality of life, and obtain financial support from their husbands to send to family members
in their country of origin (Lee, Lee and Kim 2012b; Lu 2005). For women who immigrate to Korea as
labor migrants – a large proportion of which are ethnic Korean Chinese - marriage is regarded as a means
to maintain their residency and, therefore, continue their employment in Korea (Seol et al.
2005). Results from two different large sample surveys show evidence of this phenomenon. For example,
findings from a survey in 2007 revealed that 70% of female migrant partners entered Korea for the
purpose of marriage, and among all female Vietnamese and Filipino immigrants who entered Korea that
same year, 90% immigrated in order to marry Korean men (Jung 2007). Another survey conducted by
Ministry of Health and Welfare (2005) reports that when asked why they married their Korean husbands,
almost half of foreign brides responded they did so for “economic reasons” (41%), in contrast 35% of
them responded they married because “they love their husbands” (Seol et al. 2005). Some migrant wives
try to seek a new job to contribute to the household economy and/or to send remittance to their remaining
family in their home country. These women are generally marginalized in the labor market or occupy
lower paid jobs irrespective of their particular nationality and ethnicity, because they lack the language
and work skills demanded in higher paid industries (Seol, Lee and Cho 2006a). Therefore, not
surprisingly, marriage migrants tend to depend heavily or even completely on their husbands’ financial
support (Lee, Lee and Kim 2012a). Prior studies have pointed out that this imbalance in economic power
and social status within the married-couple is the critical reason for the difference in household decision-
making power between husbands and wives and gender inequality, resulting in the higher dependence of
women on their husbands, as well as increased domestic abuse (Kalmuss and Straus 1982; Lee 2008; Lim
1997; Warner, Lee and Lee 1986).
Besides the individual economic motivations of migrant brides, the context of international marriage
in Korea helps explain the strong dependence of migrant women on their husbands and the inequity
within their relationships. With the rapid urbanization of Korean society since the 1950s, Korean women
have attained a higher level of education and increased their participation in the labor market. In order to
pursue their educational and occupational goals, women marry at later ages, or sometimes they forgo
marriage altogether (Kim 2008a). This demographic shift in marital formation is combined with a
traditional preference for male offspring and a subsequent fertility rate below replacement levels,
reducing the number of marriageable women in the country (Kim 2004). The resulting deficit of domestic
female partners is a phenomenon referred to as “marriage squeeze.” Under these circumstances, Korean
males, particularly those of lower socioeconomic status such as unmarried males living in rural farming
communities, or low-income divorced males living in urban areas, find it difficult to attract women of
marriageable age in the domestic marriage market (Kim 2008c; Seol, Lee and Cho 2006b). Korean males
are then forced to find prospective wives in other countries, especially in low income countries in Asia
because these countries have cultures of marriage similar to South Korea, and Korean males can take
advantage of Korea’s higher economic position to attract spouses. Although a portion of international
marriages are mediated through personal networks, or through the Unification Church, a large share of
marriages are arranged by profit–oriented agencies or commercialized brokers, which have played an
important role in increasing the cross-border marriage market in Asia (Kim 2008c; Wang 2007). These
international marriage agencies arrange meetings between local women in less developed countries and
marginalized men in Korea. This process takes only a few weeks and men pay a sizable fee to meet their
potential wives (Park, Park and Kim 2007), a phenomenon which is defined by previous scholars as
“mail-order brides” or the “commodification of cross-border marriage” (Wang and Chang 2002). Because
international marriages begin as economic arrangements, many Korean husbands think of themselves as
“owners” and think of their foreign wives as “products” and this relationship continues throughout the
marriage (Kim 2008b). Moreover, with paying the large amount of fee, Korean husbands and their parents
expect that foreign-born wives will “serve” their husbands and their parents-in-law and dedicate
themselves to their husbands’ lineage by bearing a child (Lim 1997).
In addition to economic reasons, psychological dimensions also may contribute to the strong
husband dependence observed among foreign wives. Generally migrants (including those who come to
Korea) face decreased social support due to the separation from family members and friends left in their
countries of origin. Although local governments have various programs to offer social support to female
migrant partners, some of these women find it difficult to recreate a useful support system, mostly
because many of them do not work outside the home and they have no prior social connections in Korea
(Jung and Kang 2008), or others live in rural areas where institutions for social activities are relatively
rare (Kim and Shin 2007). Under these circumstances, husbands are an important source of direct social
support and also provide social networks by helping foreign wives to establish other types of social
connections (Jeong et al. 2009).
Another factor influencing marriage migrant women’s subordinate position in households is the
procedure for obtaining residency status in South Korea. In order to gain citizenship, immigrants must
maintain residence in the country for at least two years and women must obtain consent from their
husbands. Sometimes husbands and their families use this condition for the requesting of citizenship to
force foreign brides to tolerate unequal relationships (Kim 2010). Although the divorce rate between
Korean males and foreign women is much higher than for native couples (Statistic Korea, 2011), previous
studies indicate that marriage migrant women have few alternatives but to remain in their current
marriages because divorce is viewed in negative terms by friends and family in their original countries
and once divorced, the new divorcee would be unable to support herself financially (Lee, Lee and Kim
2012b). This reliance on husbands to provide support during the citizenship acquisition process, and a
lack of alternatives to staying in the marriage can reinforce male dominance in international marriage
households. In response to the important role of the husband’s characteristics in understanding marriage
migrant women’s various life experiences, studies of foreign brides in Korea generally consider the
husband’s support, SES and their relationship with their foreign brides as points to explaining migrant
women’s health outcomes (Kim et al. 2006; Lee, Lee and Kim 2012b). In particular, the findings of
several qualitative studies of marriage migrant women all agree that the health outcomes for the migrant
women are strongly related to their husband’s economic circumstances and the quality of their
relationship. But despite the attention given to the husband’s characteristics, the question of to what
extent the husband’s SES is related to their foreign wives’ health outcomes is still ambiguous. This is due
mainly to an earlier study pattern: Although many studies have taken husband characteristics into account
in the multivariate analysis, research has generally viewed the health problems of foreign wives only from
an individual perspective or migrant women’s own background, dealing with husband characteristics to
be simple confounders without appropriately controlling for them. This pattern is also found in studies
that examine the various health indicators of migrant women which are closely related to a woman’s
husband; such as contraception (Kim, Kim and Kwon 2008), spousal support (Kim 2008a), acculturative
stress, and family conflict (Park, Park and Kim 2007). Furthermore, most of the studies that have
explored the correlation between husbands’ SES and foreign wives’ health outcomes have been limited by
small sample sizes, or have focused only on certain racial/ethnic groups, with findings not generalizable
to the larger population. Thus, in this study we investigate how the husband’s two SES indicator -
education and employment status - affects their migrant partner’s health and life satisfaction. We make
use of a large-scale dataset that contains detailed demographic, socioeconomic and migration information
about partners in multicultural families. To provide a broad understanding of marriage migrant health
outcomes, we focus on female migrant partners from four sending countries, which represented 85.7% of
all foreign wives in South Korea in 2010.
Hypotheses
Based on the above arguments regarding the health outcomes of marriage migrant women and
husband’s SES, the hypotheses of this study are as follows:
1. A review of the relationship between spouse’s SES and health status suggests Korean husband’s
SES may affect the health outcomes of their migrant wives (Kim et al. 2006; Monden et al. 2007). Thus
we first expect that marriage migrants who married Korean husbands with a higher education and level of
employment are more likely to report good health and life satisfaction (hypothesis 1). We expect that
migrant women who married men of higher SES, measured by their education and employment status,
will report good health and life satisfaction.
2. In addition to the influence of socioeconomic characteristics of the husband, migrant women’s
high spousal dependency, and their poor socioeconomic position in Korean society leads us to assume
that the influence of husband’s SES on the migrant partner’s health and life satisfaction maybe similar to
or stronger than foreign bride’s own SES indicators (hypothesis 2). We expect that the influence of
husband’s SES on female migrant’s health and life satisfaction will be as strong as or stronger than the
foreign bride’s own SES.
3. Since the influences of husband’s socioeconomic characteristics on the foreign wife’s health and
life satisfaction is essentially cumulative over time after they marry, we can assume that the magnitude of
the effect varies by the duration of marriage. Further, when migrating to a different social environment
female migrant women tend to confront various challenges such as the stress of adapting to the new
society, psychological isolation, social exclusion and language barriers in Korea (Kim 2010; Kim and
Shin 2007; Lee, Lee and Kim 2012b). This series of events would erode their physical and mental health
over time even though they have a good health status upon arrival to the country given their young age
and positive selection among other potential immigrants. We assume that this cumulative negative effect
over time may vary in relation to who migrant partners live with. Accordingly, we expect an interactive
effect between duration of marriage and husband’s SES, when a foreign wife lives with Korean husband
with a higher SES they are likely to show better health outcomes than those who live with low SES
husbands (hypothesis 3).
Data and Analysis Sample
Data are drawn from the 2009 National Survey on Multicultural Families carried out by the
Ministry for Health and Welfare, and Family Affairs. The survey investigated various dimensions of life
among foreign brides and grooms including family relations, employment, children, social activities,
health status and need for welfare. The sample included about 131,000 multicultural families who reside
in Korea, among about 167,000 marriage migrant or marriage migrant who naturalized as a Korean
citizen listed in the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, South Korea. Overall response rate
for the survey was 56%. The survey was conducted during 20th July to 20th September 2009. We select
female marriage migrants age 14 and over who came from China, Vietnam, The Philippines and Japan or
are ethnic Korean Chinese (n=63,048). The respondents who are divorced or widowed (n=3,628) and
those with missing information are not included in the analysis. Excluding divorced or widowed
respondents may arise selection bias as they might have worse relationship with their spouse than those
who within marriage, but the proportion of this group is very small (less than one percent) and we think it
would not affect our results. The number of excluded observations due to missing information across
covariates of interest is about 18% and in preliminary analyses we found no significant changes in results
due to missing data. Consequently, our finial sample includes 49,087 marriage migrant women.
Measures
Two outcomes are chosen to investigate the health of female marriage migrants: self-rated health
(SRH) and self-reported life satisfaction. Several research has documented SRH is relevant to physical
health outcomes such as mortality and morbidity (Gogers, Hummer and Nam 2000; Hoeymans et al. 1997)
and has been used in prior studies to represent health status of immigrants (Cho et al. 2004; Newbold
2005). Furthermore, given that migrant women have lower access to the health care system and lack
official health records, it is possible that self-reported health may provide a more accurate and reliable
health measure. The other dependent variable, life satisfaction, has been previously found to serve as not
only physical and mental health indicator (Koivumaa-Honkanen et al. 2000; Tran and Nguyen 1994), also
other aspects of individual health that pertain to general well-being, one’s sense of security and relative
assessment of material and psychological environments (Strine et al. 2008). Thus, these two measures of
health would allow us to identify female migrants’ physical health and quality of life simultaneously. In
the survey, respondents were asked to rate their general health as very good, quite good, neutral, bad and
very bad and we classified these in two categories: very good and quite good for ‘good health’ and else.
Similarly, the survey asked the level of life satisfaction as a whole with a five-point scale; Very much
satisfied, satisfied, neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, dissatisfied and very much dissatisfied. Like SRH,
respondents are defined ‘good life satisfaction’ if they reported very much satisfied and satisfied life
satisfaction.
Independent variables are largely divided into three dimensions: female migrant characteristics,
husband characteristics and couple’s characteristics. For each partner, we included age measured in years,
employment status and level of education. Employment status is categorized into employed and
unemployed. Education is classified into three categories: less than 9 years of schooling (less than middle
school), 10 to12 years (some high school to high school graduate), and 13 years or more (at least some
college). In addition to these variables, female migrant women characteristics include nationality or
ethnicity (Ethnic Korean Chinese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipina and Japanese) and having social
networks. Whether respondents have social networks is assessed using the question in the survey: ‘Who
do you spend your time with in the following situation?’ to which respondents gave answers for four
different situations: ‘Having an individual or family trouble’, ‘Leisure, recreation, hobby’, ‘Celebrations
or ceremonies (Wedding, funeral).’ We define migrant women have access to a social network if they
answer they have Korean friends to rely on for at least one of the suggested situations and migrant women
are defined as not having social network if she does not have Koreans for all of four situations. Couple’s
characteristics include educational and employment differences between spouses, monthly household
income, duration of the marriage, number of children and how the couple met. The survey measures
average household income before tax and this is coded in five groups; less than 1.0 Korean million won
(KMW, about 1,000 USD), 1.1 to 2.0 KMW, 2.1 to 3.0 KMW, more than 3.1 KMW and ‘don’t know’. We
did not exclude respondents who answer ‘don’t know’ for household income as we found marriage
migrant women who select this category were statistically different from others regarding health
outcomes in the preliminary analysis. Previous literature indicates that many of foreign females involved
in international marriages have limited or false information on their future South Korean husbands,
mostly because international marriage agencies distort or even withhold information on husband’s
characteristics such as his age and income to facilitate the negotiation of the marriage match (Seol et al.
2005). During marriage, sometimes native-husbands are reluctant to share information about household
property even if foreign brides contribute for it because of concern that the woman will ask for a divorce
upon finding out she was given wrong information regarding her husband’s economic status (Kim et al.
2006). Whether before or during marriage, the fact that a foreign wife is not aware of information that is
supposed to be shared in advance to the marriage or the denial of women’s requests for equal partnership
shows the imbalanced partner relationship inherent to these types of marriages, which is the cornerstone
to our argument regarding the disadvantageous position of foreign wives in South Korea. The duration of
marriage was measured in years. Number of children was classified in three groups: none, one, and two or
more children. Since this study posits the marriage migrant women’s subordinate position and
dependence on husband in a household increase the influence of husband’s SES on their health, SES
differences between couple may explain the effect of husband’s SES well. Thus, in addition to educational
attainment and employment status of each partner, we included the differences in education and
employment status between partners. For education, three categories were used; same education level,
wife has lower education than husband and wife has higher education. Difference in employment status
was also measured in three categories: same employment status, only husband working and only wife
working.
Methods
We first present descriptive statistics on the sample and the main covariates of interest by our two
health outcomes. Next, we use four different logistic regression models to address our hypotheses for the
two health outcomes, SRH and life satisfaction. . In the baseline model (model 1), only female migrant’s
characteristics were included, model 2 adds husband’s characteristics. And model 3 adds couple’s
characteristics such as income, marriage duration, number of children, and the way in which the couple
met. In model 4, instead of controlling for each spouse level of education and employment status, we
controlled for the differences in education and employment status between spouses. In addition to these
models and to test hypothesis 3, we estimate additional models with interaction terms between both
husband’s education and the educational difference between spouses, and duration of marriage. Results
from these models are presented in table 4. Employment status of partners was not considered because,
unlike educational attainment, one’s employment could be different over time and the data we used here
do not include employment history after marriage.
Results
Table 1 shows percentage distributions of the health outcomes and other covariates. Among the all
national/ethnic groups, ethnic Korean Chinese accounted for the highest proportion of respondents in the
sample (39.4%), followed by Vietnamese (28.3%) and Chinese (15%). The proportion of Filipina and
Japanese women is relatively small, making up about 10 percent and seven percent of women respectively.
Overall, about half of foreign brides (52.8%) reported ‘good health’ and almost 58% reported ‘good life
satisfaction.’ About 44% of migrant women have a high school diploma and 20.5% of them have college
degree or higher education. The distribution of women’s education is similar to the distribution of
husbands’ education, in that half of husbands have a high school diploma and 21.8% of husbands have
higher than college degree. In contrast to education, there are considerable differences between wives’
and husbands’ employment status and age. Regarding employment status, only about six percent of
husbands were unemployed at the time of survey, while unemployment among female migrant wives is
about ten times as much (59.7%). In addition, husbands are almost 10 years older than their migrant wives,
the mean age of husbands is 43.3 years and for women the mean age is 33.3 years. Turning to couple’s
characteristics, nearly half of spouses have the same degree of education and in about 30 percent of
couples, migrant women have lower education than their Korean husband. The proportion of couple with
equal employment status is 35.1% and in 5.7% of couples the wife is the only one employed. These
descriptive information suggesting differences in the employment status and the educational difference
supporting the basic concept of our hypotheses which is marriage migrant women’s subordinate position
in household. The monthly household income of sample is low, 18.2% responded that their household
income is less than 1.0 KMW, and for 40.3% their monthly household income is less than 2.0 KMW.
Only 8.9% of couples report more than 3.0 KMW monthly household income. The average length of
marriage is 5.5 years, and multicultural families who have children comprise about 65% of the total
sample. The highest proportion of migrant women responded that they met their husband through
commercialized agencies or brokers (27.4%) and similar proportions of women reported they did so
through family member or relative (25.7%) or in other ways (26.8). Columns 2 and 3 in Table 1 show the
distribution of sample by the two health outcomes. In here, we can observe that female migrant partners
whose husbands have college or higher education, are currently employed and younger, represent a higher
percentage of those who report ‘good health’ and ‘good life satisfaction.’
Table 2 and 3 are set up to examine our first and second hypotheses. The former table presents the
results of the logistic regression models for SRH. Model 1 which is base model only includes migrant
women’s characteristics and shows that migrant women with college education or higher have 26%
increased odds of reporting better self-reported health than women with less than high school education.
The age of migrant women has a negative effect on their health in that younger foreign brides are more
likely to report better SRH (OR:0.96). Migrant women who have a social network exhibit much higher
odds of having better SRH than migrant women who do not have a social network (OR:1.61). Model 2
adds husband’s characteristics and we found a positive and significant effect of husband’s education and
employment status. For example, marriage migrant women whose husbands have a high school diploma
and college education or higher have 16% and 30% higher odds of reporting better SRH compared to
women marrying Korean husband with less than a high school diploma respectively. Notably, the effects
shown in the odds ratios for husband’s educational characteristics are higher than those of women’s own
education, suggesting that the SRH disparity among foreign brides is more influenced by their husband’s
education than by their own education. This pattern is also found in husband’s employment status,
migrant women whose husband is currently working have 26% increased odds of having better SRH than
their counterparts, but employment status shows weak association with their SRH (OR:1.06). In model 3
which adds controls for couple’s characteristics we see that the odds ratios for both spouses educational
level are reduced, and the effect of employment status is no longer significant. Yet, despite the decreased
influence of husbands’ SES on women’s SRH, the effect of husband’s education remains significant and is
still larger than the effect of migrant women’s own education. Among couple’s characteristics, we observe
substantial SRH differences by household income, suggesting that the advantage of husband’s higher
education observed in model 2 is due in part to household wealth. The duration of marriage has a
significant negative effect on migrant women’s SRH (OR:0.97), every one-year increase in marriage
duration is associated to a three percent decrease in the odds of reporting better SRH. There is no
significant association between SRH and the number of children or the way the couple met. Odds ratios in
model 4 reveal that marriage migrant women who have a higher educational attainment than their Korean
husbands exhibit 9% lower odds of reporting better SRH compared to women with the same degree of
education with their husbands. But there is no significant difference by the couple’s employment status
gap. The results from table 2 support out hypotheses that the higher husband’s SES significantly increase
the chance of reporting better SRH and this effect is stronger than that of women’s SES.
With regard to life satisfaction, the results show a more dynamic pattern. In model 1 in Table 3,
only female migrant women with a college education or higher have increased odds of reporting ‘better
life satisfaction’ compared to the reference group, but the advantage of migrant women with college
education disappears after adjusting for husband’s characteristics in model 2. Instead, foreign brides with
high school education or higher have decreased odds of reporting good life satisfaction. Reduced odds
ratios are also found in model 3 that additionally stratified couple’s characteristics, suggesting the
covariates included in husband’s and couple’s characteristics have a protective effect for marriage migrant
wives in terms of their life satisfaction. Despite of decreased odds of showing good life satisfaction in
model 2, we found,again, an education gradient in the impact of husband’s education for reporting good
life satisfaction. For instance, marriage migrant women with college or higher education have 7%
decreased odds of reporting good life satisfaction, however, those who marry Korean men with college
education or higher have 58% increased odds of reporting good life satisfaction. We also observe a
substantial difference in the effect of employment status between spouses, employed women exhibit only
8% lower odds of showing satisfaction with their life than unemployed migrant women, but women
whose husband are currently employed have 84% increased odds of reporting good life satisfaction than
women with unemployed husbands (model 2). Model 3 shows a stronger negative effect of migrant
women’s education on their life satisfaction compared to model 2. Although the increased odds of
reporting higher life satisfaction associated to husband’s education diminished after controlling for
couple’s characteristics, husband’s education continues to be significantly associated to increased odds of
reporting life satisfaction for their foreign wives. Employment status of spouses follow opposite
directions, employed migrant women have lower odds of having life satisfaction than the reference group
(OR: 0.86), but the odds of reporting good life satisfaction is higher for women who have employed
husbands (OR: 1.45). Unlike results in model 3 of SRH, most of the couple’s characteristics are
significantly associated with foreign brides’ life satisfaction. Similar to SRH, higher monthly household
income is related to increased odds of reporting higher life satisfaction, and duration of marriage is
negatively associated with women’s life satisfaction. Migrant women who met their husband through
their friends, family members and religious groups have increased odds of showing better life satisfaction
than foreign brides who met their husband through commercialized agencies. In model 4 we observe
significant relations between foreign wife’s life satisfaction and the differences in education and
employment characteristics between spouses. Migrant partners tend to show lower life satisfaction when
their educational attainment is higher than that of their husbands compared to women who have the same
level of education than their husbands. Similarly, marriage migrant women show lower odds of reporting
better life satisfaction when they are currently working, and increased odds of reporting higher life
satisfaction when their husbands are employed. These results from logistic models point to significant
difference in migrant women’s life satisfaction by their husband’s SES substantiate the hypothesis 1 but it
is not clear that husband’s SES have a ‘stronger’ effect than that of women’s SES because odds ratios for
education categories and employments status show opposite direction.
Results from the models with interaction effects for the two health outcomes are presented in Tables
4 and 5, Table 4 shows the interaction effect between husband’s education and marriage duration, while
table 5 suggests the interaction effect between education differences between spouses and marriage
duration. With regard to the interaction effect of husband’s education and duration of marriage, no
significant interactions were found for both outcomes. However, we find a significant interaction effect of
interaction between duration of marriage and the difference in education among spouses. In specific,
marriage migrant women who have lower educational attainment than their husbands have a lower
likelihood of reporting better SRH and life satisfaction as they spend more time in the marriage than
women who have the same degree of education than their Korean husbands.
Discussion
The current study examined the effect of Korean husband’s SES on SRH and life satisfaction
among about 43,000 female international marriage migrants from four countries in East Asia who reside
in South Korea. Due mainly to the commercialized international marriage process in East Asia and
particular circumstances in South Korea which increase foreign brides’ dependence on husbands and
increase inequality in gender roles within the household, we hypothesized a significant a strong influence
of husband’s SES on their foreign wives’ health and life satisfaction. The results of this study, on the
whole, show significant disparities of SRH and life satisfaction among female migrant partners by
husband’s educational attainment and employment status, and the effect of husband’s SES indicators
remains even when we adjust for women’s own SES. In fact, the effect of husband’s SES is greater than
the effect of women’s characteristics Health disparities by Korean husband’s educational attainment were
found even after adjustment for variety of covariates of interest. Interestingly, the effect of the education
and employment status of spouses follow opposite direction, marriage migrant women’s education and
employment status are associated with lower odds of reporting higher life satisfaction, while the
education and employment status of their husbands have a positive effect on women’s life satisfaction.
The results from the logistic regression models, on the one hand, are largely similar to findings of
previous studies that explored the relationship between spouse SES indicators and one’s health behaviors
and health status (Kalmuss and Straus 1982; Moser, Pugh and Goldblatt 1988; Van Berkel and De Graaf
1995). Other studies also found that husband’s or spouse’s socioeconomic characteristics such as
occupational status and educational attainment are significantly associated with one’s health, emphasizing
the important role of spouse’s SES in explaining one’s health and life satisfaction. On the other hand, in
spite of those similarities, the present analysis shows differing results than those of earlier research in
several ways: first, despite of close relationships between spouse’s SES and one’s health, previous studies
have found that one’s SES indicators are better predictors of health status than spouses’ economic
characteristics (Martikainen 1995; Monden et al. 2007; Moser, Pugh and Goldblatt 1988). That is, studies
generally explain the socioeconomic characteristics of spouses as subsidiary information that may also
affect one’s health beyond one’s own characteristics. In this study, however, as we expected, Korean
husband’s SES -education and employment status- play a more important role in explaining migrant
women’s self-rated health. Another difference from previous findings is that the strong effect of husband’s
SES on their migrant wife in the analysis is consistent even after controlling for many other covariates
including household income. This result shows important implications for our understanding of the
relationship between Korean husbands and international marriage migrant women. The earlier studies
mostly explain the influence of spouse’s SES on one’s health from material perspectives indicating that
economic support in a household from one’s spouse could affect SES of members of household and then
this would influence one’s health outcomes. But the results of this study show there are more than
economic reasons in the relationship between husband’s SES and foreign bride’s health, which could be
linked to healthy lifestyle, information, access to asocial network and the relationship between partners.
With regard to life satisfaction in model 3, higher education and employment status of husband are
associated to higher odds of reporting better life satisfaction. However, foreign wives’ own education and
employment have a negative effect on their odds of reporting life satisfaction (model 3) which is different
from what we expected. This result is also not in line with the general idea that education has positive
effect on individual’s material conditions and well-being as higher education levels are related to better
wealth and material conditions. Although there is evidence that the direction of the correlation between
education and life satisfaction is mixed, a negative relationship between these two variables usually
emerges in high income people, rather than among people in low income, to which marriage migrant
women mostly belong to (Palmore and Luikart 1972). This reversed relationship between migrant
women’s SES and life satisfaction may be understood when we think about foreign brides’ economic
motivations for cross-border marriage and their relatively poor life conditions in South Korea. As
discussed earlier, marriage migrant women try to send remittances to their family back in their home
countries and expect to improve their life conditions in Korea in terms of material wealth. However, this
expectation of improved life conditions is often not achieved because, ironically, the Korean men who
marry foreign brides are likely to come from a more disadvantaged socioeconomic background compared
to other Korean men, which is precisely what made it difficult for them to find spouses in the domestic
marriage market. Wang (2007) who investigated international marriage between Taiwanese man and
Vietnamese women in Taiwan, which is a case similar to that of South Korea, clearly documented this
contradiction, “no sooner had they arrived in Taiwan than they found out that their husbands’ social status
was not what they had imagined” (Wang 2007). In fact, qualitative research on marriage migrant’s life in
South Korea indicates that foreign brides experience frustration and conflict with their Korean husbands
when they fail to send remittances to their family in the country of origin. In contrast to self-rated health,
which is mainly determined by physical health status, the concept of life satisfaction is affected by how
people rate their life in terms of relative standards compared to what they would expect their life to be
given their circumstances and social status (Duncan 1975). Thus migrant women with higher levels of
education are more likely to feel disappointment of their current circumstances when they could have had
a better economic status and more equality in a relationship in their country of origin.
The result of a negative effect of the age independent duration of marriage in model 3 and 4 is
consistent with earlier studies (Park, Park and Kim 2007). Also these changes in health outcomes during
marriage are similar to the ‘healthy migrant effect’ theory which explains that immigrant’s health
advantages at the time of arrival to the U.S. worsened over time as they acculturate to the U.S. culture
(Lopez-Gonzalez, Aravena and Hummer 2005). In the context of U.S., studies highlight that the rate of
health deterioration as immigrants spend a longer time in the country could vary with their socioeconomic
characteristics, such as education (Cho and Hummer 2001). In the case of marriage migrant women in
Korea, we found that the negative effect of time spent in Korea on health varies depending on the
educational gaps between spouses, rather than their own educational levels. Given the very low
proportion of employed migrant women and their low economic power in a household, migrant wives
with lower education than their husbands tend to be more subordinate to husbands than do other women
who have an equal or higher education than their husbands.
After migration, immigrants generally start to integrate into the mainstream culture of the host
country and in this process, they choose how to they acculturate based on to what extent to they want to
maintain their origin culture and interact within the host society (Berry 1997). Marriage migrant women
in Korea, however, lose the freedom to choose how they integrate into the mainstream within a male-
dominated household and isolation which constrains their access to local culture and their opportunities to
be in contact with the larger society, so they have limitations in their destinies of acculturation. In this
process, immigrants are likely to be forced to place little value on their own culture while accepting the
culture of the husband. We think two aspects of this process create outcomes of worse life satisfaction for
marriage migrants. First, when a foreign wife is limited in her freedom to pursue the social or cultural
behaviors of her home country and is forced to adopt those of her husband’s culture, the foreign wife is
more likely to experience acculturative stress (Dona and Berry 1994). For instance, qualitative research
on the health risks for international marriage migrant women in Korea shows that migrant women married
to Korean husbands suffer stress due to having to adopt a new diet that may be radically different in
comparison to the cuisine of their country of origin, yet they are forced to follow the Korean dietary
culture as their husbands and parent-in-laws prefer (Lee, Lee and Kim 2012b).
Since the second half of the twentieth century studies on international migration have paid particular
attention to the emergence of female migration, suggesting the various patterns of women participating in
international migration and the trigger factors behind these new migration trends (Curran et al. 2006).
International marriage migration is one of the main features of female migration in East and South East
Asia, however, little research has been done on the role of social determinants in relation to the wellbeing
of international marriage migrants in the country of destination. Among other things, the health outcomes
of these migrants have not received appropriate attention in the research scholarship (Wang and Chang
2002). Our findings demonstrate the importance of the husband’s SES in relation to the health and life
satisfaction of female marriage migrants. Therefore future health interventions and policies aimed at
helping international marriage migrants should take into account the husband’s characteristics in their
analysis.
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Tables
Table 1. Percentage Distributions of Health Outcomes, Demographic and SES Characteristics for
Marriage Migrant Women (n=43,699)
Variables All Good SRH Good Life
Satisfaction
Very good and quite good SRH 52.8 - -
Very much satisfied and satisfied life
satisfaction 57.9
- -
Own Characteristics
Education
Less than middle school graduate 34.8 33.6** 36.6
High school graduate 44.5 44.4 43.9
College or more 20.5 21.9 19.4
Employment status
Employed 40.8 39.5** 38.4
Unemployed 59.1 60.4 61.5
Age (Mean, year) 33.3 32.3 32.4
Social network
Having a network 62.0 66.9** 67.9
Country of origin
Korean ethnic Chinese 39.4 39.6** 40.1
Chinese 15.0 16.1 15.6
Vietnamese 28.3 27.9 30.9
Filipino 9.6 10.3 8.8
Japanese 7.4 5.9 4.3
Husband Characteristics
Education
Less than middle school graduate 24.4 21.1** 22.1
High school graduate 53.7 54.8 53.9
College or more 21.8 24.0 23.8
Employment Status
Employed 94.3 95.2** 96.0
Unemployed 5.7 4.7 3.9
Age(Mean, year) 43.3 42.5 42.9
Couple’s characteristics
Educational Difference
Same 50.2 50.5** 50.0
Lower for wife 29.7 30.7 32.6
Higher for wife 20.0 18.6 17.2
Employment status Difference
Same 35.1 34.8** 34.5
Only husband working 59.7 60.4 61.5
Only wife working 5.7 4.7 3.9
Household income (KMW)
Less than 1.0 18.2 14.7** 14.2
1.1-2.0 40.3 39.8 38.9
2.1-3.0 20.3 22.8 23.5
More than 3.0 8.9 11.3 11.5
Don’t know 12.1 11.2 11.6
Duration of marriage
(mean, in years) 5.2 4.7 4.7
Children
None 35.1** 35.3 37.8
1 39.2 40.3 39.3
2 or more 25.6 24.2 22.8
How couple met
Through an agency 27.4** 27.5 28.2
Through family or a relative 25.7 25.7 27.1
Through a friend or co-worker 19.9 20.2 20.4
Others (religious group, by self and etc.) 26.8 26.4 24.1
Table 2. Odds Rations for the Effects of Marriage Migrant Women, Husbands and Couple
Characteristics on Self-Reported Health
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
Own Characteristics
Education [less than 9 years]
High school graduate 1.03 0.99 0.98 -
College or more 1.26** 1.16** 1.09** -
Employment status [unemployed]
Employed 1.02 1.06** 1.03 -
Age(year) 0.96** 0.96** 0.97** 0.97**
Social Network
Having a network 1.61** 1.61** 1.57** 1.58**
Country of origin[Korean Chinese]
Chinese 1.02 0.99 0.94 0.95
Vietnamese 0.62** 0.67** 0.73** 0.72**
Filipino 0.92* 0.97 1.17** 1.25**
Japanese 0.62** 0.59** 0.65** 0.69**
* P<.05 **P<.01
Husband Characteristics
Education [less than 9 years]
High school graduate - 1.16** 1.11** -
College or more - 1.30** 1.15** -
Employment status [unemployed]
Employed - 1.26** 1.08 -
Age(year) 0.99** 0.99** 1.00
Couple’s characteristics
Educational difference (Equal)
Lower education for wife - - - 0.98
Higher education for wife - - - 0.91**
Employment status difference ( Equal )
Only husband working - - - 0.97
Only wife working - - - 0.92
Household income( Less than 1.0 KMW)
1.1-2.0 - - 1.32** 1.33**
2.1-3.0 - - 1.72** 1.75**
More than 3.0 - - 2.35** 2.45**
Don’t know - - 1.09* 1.10*
Duration of marriage[in years] 0.97** 0.97**
Children[None]
1 - - 0.98 0.99
2 + - - 0.98 0.98
How couple met (Through an agency)
Through family members - - 0.96 0.97
Through friends or co-workers - - 1.02 1.03
Others (religious group, by self and etc.) - - 1.01 1.04
AIC 58643 56886 54216 54241
Table 3. Odds Rations for the Effects of Marriage Migrant Women, Husbands and Couple
Characteristics on Life Satisfaction
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
Own Characteristics
Education [less than 9 years]
High school graduate 0.92 0.88** 0.86** -
College or more 1.05** 0.93* 0.85** -
Employment status [unemployed]
Employed 0.85** 0.92** 0.86** -
Age(year) 0.98** 0.98** 0.98** 0.98**
Social Network
Having a network 1.95** 1.95** 1.87** 1.87**
Country of origin[Korean Chinese]
Chinese 1.00 0.98 0.84 0.95
Vietnamese 0.99 1.04 1.24** 1.24**
Filipino 0.76** 0.81** 1.06** 1.10*
Japanese 0.34** 0.32** 0.38** 0.40**
Husband Characteristics
Education [less than 9 years]
High school graduate - 1.15** 1.10** -
College or more - 1.58** 1.32** -
Employment status [unemployed]
* P<.05 **P<.01
Table4. Odds Ratios of the Interactive Effect between Husbands’ Education and Marriage
Duration for SRH and Life Satisfaction
SRH Life Satisfaction
Main Effect
Husband’s Education [less than 9 years]
High school graduate 1.10* 1.14**
College or more 1.12* 1.23**
Duration of Marriage 0.96** 0.97**
Interactive Effect
High school graduate(husband) * Duration
of marriage 1.00 0.86
College or more(husband) * Duration of m
arriage 1.00 0.85
AIC 54220 51387 * P<.05 **P<.01 a Models control for migrant women characteristics, husbands characteristics and couple characteristics, full results
from these models available upon request.
Table 5. Odds Ratios of the Interactive Effect between Spouses Education Differences and
Marriage Duration for SRH and Life Satisfaction
SRH Life Satisfaction
Main Effect Educational difference (Equal)
Lower education for wife 0.93* 1.28**
Higher education for wife 1.07 0.85**
Duration of Marriage 0.97** 0.97**
Employed - 1.84** 1.45** -
Age(year) 1.00 1.00* 1.00*
Couple’s characteristics
Educational difference (Equal)
Lower education for wife - - - 1.13**
Higher education for wife - - - 0.86**
Employment status difference ( Equal )
Only husband working - - - 1.15**
Only wife working - - - 0.68**
Household income( Less than 1.0 KMW)
1.1-2.0 - - 1.43** 1.43**
2.1-3.0 - - 2.30** 2.32**
More than 3.0 - - 3.56** 3.67**
Don’t know - - 1.29** 1.30**
Duration of marriage[in years] 0.97** 0.97**
Children[None]
1 - - 0.79** 0.79**
2 + - - 0.81** 0.81**
How couple met (Through an agency)
Through family members - - 1.24** 1.24**
Through friends or co-workers - - 1.17** 1.18**
Others (religious group, by self and etc.) - - 1.14** 1.15**
AIC 56618 54642 55234 51352
Interactive Effect
Lower education for wife* Duration of m
arriage 0.99** 0.97**
Higher education for wife* Duration of
marriage 0.97 1.00
AIC 54235 54198 * P<.05 **P<.01 a Models control for migrant women characteristics, husbands characteristics and couple characteristics, full results
from these models available upon request.