Drawing on a uniquely large number of items on marital quality, this study explores the determinants of marital quality in Chitwan Valley, Nepal. Marital quality is measured with five dimensions identified through exploratory factor analysis, comprising satisfaction, communication, togetherness, problems, and disagreements. Gender, education, spouse choice, and marital duration emerge as the most important determinants of these dimensions of marital quality. Specifically, men, those with more schooling, those who participated in the choice of their spouse, and those who have been married longer have higher levels of marital quality. By contrast, caste, occupation, age at marriage, and number of children have little to no association with marital quality. However, while we identify key determinants of marital quality in this context, the majority of variation in marital quality remains unexplained.
Marital quality is an important aspect of family life that shapes well-being. Greater marital quality is associated with less depression (Williams, 2003), better self-rated health (Umberson et al., 2006), less physical illness (Wickrama et al., 1997), and other positive outcomes (Ross et al., 1990). Marital quality is also an important determinant of marital dissolution (Amato and Rogers, 1997). In turn, marital dissolution and the resulting changes in family structure shape economic inequality among households (Schwartz and Mare, 2012 and Smock et al., 1999) and the well-being of children (Bronte-Tinkew and DeJong, 2004 and Thomson et al., 1994). Given the importance of marital quality, there is also a large literature that explores the determinants of marital quality, including differences in the experience of marital quality by ethnicity and gender (Amato et al., 2003, Bulanda and Brown, 2007 and Rogers and Amato, 2000).
Underlying this research on marital quality is the challenge of operationalizing and measuring marital quality. There is widespread agreement that marital quality is shorthand for the presence of “good” aspects of a marriage and the accompanying absence of “bad” aspects. However, there is less agreement on which aspects of a marriage are relevant exemplars of good and bad aspects. There is not a single, standardized measure of marital quality used across all studies (Bradbury et al., 2000). Instead, there are a handful of indices that are commonly used – including the Quality of Marriage Index (QMI) (Norton, 1983), Marital Adjustment Test (MAT) (Locke and Wallace, 1959), and Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) (Spanier, 1976) – as well as a variety of other measures that are unique to particular surveys (Johnson et al., 1986).
In this study, we explore the determinants of marital quality in Chitwan Valley, Nepal. We find that gender, education, spouse choice, and marital duration are the most important determinants of marital quality. Men, those with more schooling, those who participated in the choice of their spouse, and those who have been married longer have higher levels of marital quality. Although, there are exceptions – this pattern does not hold among all of these characteristics for each of the five dimensions. By contrast, caste, occupation, age at marriage, and number of children have little to no association with marital quality. Further, while we identify key determinants of marital quality in this context, we also find that the majority of variation in marital quality is not explained by these factors.
This study is one of only a few to examine marital quality in a non-Western setting. As such, it contributes to the literature on marital quality by extending the commonly found association between gender and marital quality, to this context. It also reinforces the importance of education to marriage and provides a rare reflection on the connection between spouse choice and marital quality – finding that those who participate in the choice of their spouse do indeed have greater marital quality than those who do not.
Further research is needed to extend the findings of this study. In particular, the small sample size of the survey limits the analysis. Future surveys with larger sample sizes can be used to examine whether there are differences in the determinants of marital quality by gender. Hoelter et al. (2004) emphasize the importance of interactions by gender, suggesting that there are important differences in the determinants of marital quality between women and men. However, our small sample size, and in particular the small sample of men, preclude such an analysis. Such a gendered analysis would also allow for an exploration of the potential dimension of balance. In an examination of people’s conceptions of marital quality in Darjeeling District, India, Allendorf (2009) found that respondents identified men equally balancing their wives with their parents as a dimension of marital quality, while women were supposed to place their husbands above their own families. Thus, unlike the other dimensions of marital quality, what is defined as “good” for the dimension of balance differs fundamentally by gender.
