By now we know that trade can wreck politics, but can it also impact marital unions and love life? It apparently can, according to a recent study, which has added a new dimension to debates on trade and family in the U.S. David Autor of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, David Dorn of University of Zurich, and Gordon Hanson of UC San Diego have published 10 papers since 2013 that have chronicled and analysed the social, political and economic impact of U.S. trade with China. These scholars demonstrated in one of their papers that there was “strong evidence that congressional districts exposed to larger increases in import penetration disproportionately removed moderate representatives from office in the 2000s”. In another paper, the authors argued that while dislocation due to technological advances is spread across the country, trade impact is concentrated in certain pockets — cities such as Detroit in Michigan that would go on to vote for Donald Trump in November 2016.

In their latest paper released last month, these scholars argue that the decline in manufacturing has contributed to two developments. Men with less stable incomes are less attractive partners for women, leading to a fall in the number of marriages; and there has been a sharp rise in the number of children born out of wedlock or living in single parent families. “Between 1979 and 2008, the share of U.S. women between the ages of 25 and 39 who were currently married fell by 10 percentage points among the college-educated, by 15 percentage points among those with some college but no degree, and by fully 20 percentage points among women with high-school education or less.” The fraction of U.S. children born to unmarried mothers rose from 18% to 41% between 1980 and 2013.

The authors propose that “manufacturing jobs are a fulcrum on which traditional work and family arrangements rest”, and the decline in manufacturing due to trade has affected young men in multiple ways, causing a cascading impact on family formation. Men displaced from work by trade have higher mortality due to drug and alcohol poisoning; they are more likely to migrate and end up in prisons. The authors, however, add the caveat that manufacturing decline is not the prime driver of either of these trends, which have multiple other reasons too.

Faulty methodology

The study has been challenged on multiple grounds. Some scholars have challenged the methodology, while some others have pointed that it is too simplistic and does not adequately account for other factors. Two Brookings scholars, Richard V. Reeves and Dimitrios Halikias, have said the authors are overstating the case: “Their conservative estimate is that the Chinese trade shock reduced marriage rates by roughly 1%, and increased out-of-wedlock childrearing by half a per cent. Against the overall trends, these are modest impacts.” The authors have also been accused of falling prey to gender stereotyping.

What is ironic about the situation is that while Chinese trade is linked to the decline in American men’s marriageability, Chinese men are not having it all that great either. Due to gender selective abortions, the gender ratio in China has been skewed, with 118 males for every 100 females now. With fewer women around, Chinese men end up paying substantial money to a prospective bride’s relatives. Many of them are now crossing the borders to find brides in South-East Asian countries. “In 2020, there will be an estimated 30 million more Chinese men of marrying age than women in the same group,” according to a March 2015 report in Foreign Policy.