跨国婚姻大势所趋:德国先生娶法国太太,英美小姐嫁西班牙丈夫

Hard noses, not soft hearts
Many Asian men also seem to be looking abroad for wives in the hope that immigrant women will bear them more children. This indeed happens in Europe and America: the fertility rate of new immigrants is higher than average, though it reverts to the local mean within a few years. So at first, migration adds to the birth rate. Strangely, this higher initial fertility does not seem to happen in Asia, or at least not in South Korea. According to Kwang-hee Jun of Chungnam National University, non-naturalised immigrant women have on average just 1.08 children—even fewer than native Koreans, whose average is 1.79.
似乎很多亚洲丈夫倾向于海外妻子，还希望她们能生育更多的孩子。这样的情况确实也发生在欧洲和美洲：尽管经过几年的改善，生育率将会接近当地中游水平，但新移民的数据现在依然高于平均水平。所以起初，移民人口会提升出生率。但奇怪的是，在亚洲，移民起初发生的高于当地均值生育率的现象并未发生，或者，至少没有发生在韩国。根据Kwang-hee Jun of Chungnam National University，未能入籍的移民女子平均1.08个孩子，甚至比本国妇女1.79的平均水平还要低。
This finding was a shock and a puzzle. Why are immigrants in South Korea behaving so differently from those in Europe and America? One explanation may be that the age gaps between husbands and much younger wives discourage large families. Another is that in the past decade, about 60% of foreign brides have come from China, where the fertility rate is also low, especially among Chinese of Korean ethnicity. Jungho Kim of Ajou University also suggests poverty. Both spouses will usually work and may be unable to afford to bring up a child in a society where half of the cost of pre-school education comes from the household budget. Evidence for this comes from families with a Vietnamese-born bride: when they do have children, says Danièle Bélanger of the University of Western Ontario, they send some of them back to be raised for a few years by grandparents in Vietnam, where schooling is cheaper.
这个意外既是一个震惊，也是一个谜题。为何韩国移民的表现和欧美地区如此不同?一种推测的合理解释是丈夫和妻子年龄巨大差距阻止了家庭的壮大。另一个合理解释是在过去的十年间，60%的外国新娘都是中国人，中国的生育率也很低，尤其是中国朝鲜族的生育率。来自亚洲大学的Jungho Kim也提及了贫穷也是原因之一。通常，在韩国这个一半学前教育的费用都由家庭承担的国家，婚姻的双方都工作，这样，才能负担起一个孩子。加拿大西安大略大学的Danièle Bélanger举例说，和一个越南籍的女子结婚生了孩子后，他们会把一些孩子送回上学费用较低的越南，让父母抚养几年。