Vietnam Marriage Patterns after the War: Measuring the Marriage Squeeze

Nobuko Mizoguchi, University of Colorado at Boulder

The Vietnam war resulted in a sex imbalance among young adults caused by excess male mortality and sex-selective emigration after the war. These imbalances have had consequences for the first-marriage market due to the surplus of young women relative to the young men. Using data from the censuses of Vietnam, this paper explores the effect of the Vietnam War on marriage patterns in Vietnam through the application of a marriage squeeze index. Furthermore, the paper makes use of data on the U.S. bombing of Vietnam between 1965-1975 to explore the relationship between marriage squeeze and war intensity. The results show that the density of U.S. bombing was associated with the squeeze on women in first marriage in 1989. However, male emigration in the period following the war may also have greatly contributed to the marriage squeeze in 1989.