Trends of Divorce Rate and Its Regional Disparity in China.

With the rapid economic growth, China has undergone substantial social, cultural and ideological transformations over the past decades. In the meanwhile, the patterns of China's family have changed dramatically as well. However, due to data limitations, research on trends in divorce has been very rare in China; especially the quantitative studies at the macro-level. Therefore, this paper aims to present illustration of the trends of China's Crude Divorce Rate (CDR) and Refined Divorce Rate (RDR) at both national level and provincial level based on the data from China Statistical Yearbook. The regional disparity among municipalities, provinces and autonomous regions in China in terms of CDR and RDR will also be investigated. The research results suggest that China's divorce rate, measured by CDR and RDR has witnessed a steady and noticeable increase in the recent two decades, with CDR increased by 177.61% and RDR rose by 211.36%. Among four municipalities, Chongqing showed strikingly high CDR and RDR, whereas the CDR and RDR of Beijing and Shanghai have leveled in recent years. Moreover, among all the provincial level units, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has ranked in the first place over the period of research, whereas Tibet has always ranked in the last place with regard to both CDR and RDR over this period of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]