The latest statistics released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs show that in 2021, 7.6 million couples registered for marriage in China, a low going back to 1986. The figure was 10 million in 2019 and 9 million in 2020.
Last year also became the eighth consecutive year that marriage registrations fell in China.
There are several reasons for the continuous decline.
The first is that China’s population of young people is shrinking. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, China had 223 million births from 1980 to 1989, 210 million from 1990 to 1999, and 163 million from 2000 to 2009. It’s a straight downward trend.
Second, among those at an age when most people get married, men outnumber women. According to data from the latest national census in 2020, there were 17.52 million more men than women in China between the ages of 20 and 40.
The third reason is that people are getting married later in life. In 2021, the average age of people getting married for the first time in Anhui province was 31.89 for men and 30.73 for women. That figure has been on the rise since 2008, when it was about 26.
The fourth reason is prices. In urban areas, it’s the price of homes. In rural areas, it’s the price of betrothal gifts. In China, a home remains a necessary condition for a marriage for many people. Although some young people can accept renting a house with their future spouse, rents in the big cities aren’t cheap either.
The housing prices in some big cities in China are already out of reach for an ordinary member of the working class. Many young people have no choice but to put off getting married because they cannot afford a home.
In some rural areas, excessive dowry demands have prevented many young men from getting married. Moreover, the more remote and economically underdeveloped places are, the higher the betrothal gifts have to be, which overwhelms many poor rural families.
Fifth, there is growing competition for good jobs. According to data from the Ministry of Education, the number of college graduates in 2022 is expected to reach 10.76 million, an increase of 1.67 million from the previous year. In recent years, in light of the fierce competition in the job market, many college graduates have chosen what’s known as “slow employment.” Without a stable income, many are less willing to get married and have children.
In addition, as the economy has grown, the concept of marriage has changed. For young people, there’s nothing wrong with remaining unmarried. Unlike their parents’ generation, more and more young people view being single as a normal life choice. In particular, as women get more educated and more financially independent, they become less willing to marry than men, survey data shows.
It is worth noting that a declining marriage rate is not unique to China, but a common phenomenon in many developed countries. For example, according to data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, a club of mostly rich countries, from 1995 to 2019, the marriage rate fell from 6.4% to 4.8% in Japan, from 8.7% to 4.7% in South Korea, and from 8.9% to 6.1% in the United States.
As you might imagine, the number of people getting married influences the number of babies that are born. A drop in the marriage rate will affect the birth rate, which impacts economic growth and the development of society. Last year was the fifth straight year in China that the number of births had dropped. And that stems directly from the fall in the number of registered marriages.
Faced with both of these declines, government departments need to introduce policies to encourage people to get married and have children, including measures that would lower the cost of housing for young people.
In addition, society needs to guide young people so they have a positive view toward love, marriage and family, and actively create favorable conditions to allow more people of the right age to get married and start a family.
He Yafu is a demographer and author.
The views and opinions expressed in this opinion section are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the editorial positions of Caixin Media.
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