Pathways to Extramarital Sex in Shanghai during the Transition from State to Market

Feng Tian, Duke University
Giovanna Merli, Duke University

Several scholars have claimed urban China is undergoing a “sex revolution” in tandem with economic transformations. The reforms have had profound implications for social organizations, group affiliation and personal lives, especially for changing environments that may affect perception of self and sexual behaviors. We explore the characteristics of extramarital sexual behavior with data from a recent citywide sexual behavior and sexual networks survey representative of the Shanghai urban population age18-49. The survey contains unique information on respondents’ marital and sexual histories, their current and previous occupation and employer’s economic ownership sector. Both rare-events logistic regression and event-history analysis are used to describe the role that changing social and work environments have on the risk of extramarital sex. We will conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings for the changing regime of sexual relations and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases in the world’s largest population.