Job mobility and extramarital sex in reform-era Urban China
The rise of extramarital sex in China is often portrayed as a consequence of a normative shift, that is, the diversification of family and related values that has accompanied the country's move toward a less ideologically controlled society. We argue that the increase in extramarital sex is not only the result of a normative shift but also has been structurally determined by a reorganization of the labor market. We view job mobility, which was strongly discouraged in the prereform era, as a proxy for employee's independence from institutional control over sexual behavior. Using a male sample from the Shanghai Sexual Network Survey (SSNS), a citywide representative survey of Shanghai population aged eighteen to forty-nine, our analysis reveals that male job changers, particularly those whose new jobs are in the market sector, are associated with a significantly higher likelihood of engaging in extramarital sex than those who never change jobs. © 2014 M.E. Sharpe, Inc.