Qian and Oian:The gender divide in urban China:Singlehood and assortative mating by age and education 2.3 The current study In China,increasing educational opportunities have equalized the playing field in college education between men and women(Treiman 2013;Yeung 2013).Meanwhile, education is now strongly tied to occupational prestige;earnings returns to education-- college education in particular--have increased rapidly(Bian and Logan 1996;Zhang and Zhao 2007;Zhao and Zhou 2007).Since education plays an increasingly important role in determining an individual's socioeconomic position,it is not a surprise that educational homogamy in urban China has increased between the 1970s and the late 1990s,as seen in the United States (Han 2010).Nevertheless,traditional gender roles are stronger today than in the recent past,which is predicted to produce different patterns of marriage formation and assortative mating from those in the United States and other developed countries (Blossfeld 1995;Qian 1998;Schwartz and Mare 2005). Based on the discussion above,we formulate the following hypotheses regarding marriage formation and assortative mating in urban China: 1)College-educated women have lower marriage rates than their male counterparts,especially among those who marry at later ages. 2)The patterns of educational and age assortative marriage are gender asymmetrical: 2.a)Among marriages in which two spouses have different levels of educational attainment,husbands tend to have more education than wives; 2.b)Among marriages in which two spouses differ in age,wives tend to be younger than husbands. 3)The pattern of educational assortative mating varies by age at first marriage (Qian 1998):individuals marrying at later ages are less likely to form educational homogamy.This pattern is expected to be more evident among men than among women. 1342 http://www.demographic-research.orgQian and Qian: The gender divide in urban China: Singlehood and assortative mating by age and education 1342 http://www.demographic-research.org 2.3 The current study In China, increasing educational opportunities have equalized the playing field in college education between men and women (Treiman 2013; Yeung 2013). Meanwhile, education is now strongly tied to occupational prestige; earnings returns to education -- college education in particular -- have increased rapidly (Bian and Logan 1996; Zhang and Zhao 2007; Zhao and Zhou 2007). Since education plays an increasingly important role in determining an individual‟s socioeconomic position, it is not a surprise that educational homogamy in urban China has increased between the 1970s and the late 1990s, as seen in the United States (Han 2010). Nevertheless, traditional gender roles are stronger today than in the recent past, which is predicted to produce different patterns of marriage formation and assortative mating from those in the United States and other developed countries (Blossfeld 1995; Qian 1998; Schwartz and Mare 2005). Based on the discussion above, we formulate the following hypotheses regarding marriage formation and assortative mating in urban China: 1) College-educated women have lower marriage rates than their male counterparts, especially among those who marry at later ages. 2) The patterns of educational and age assortative marriage are gender asymmetrical: 2.a) Among marriages in which two spouses have different levels of educational attainment, husbands tend to have more education than wives; 2.b) Among marriages in which two spouses differ in age, wives tend to be younger than husbands. 3) The pattern of educational assortative mating varies by age at first marriage (Qian 1998): individuals marrying at later ages are less likely to form educational homogamy. This pattern is expected to be more evident among men than among women