Marriages in China plummeted by a fifth last year, the biggest drop on record, despite manifold efforts by authorities to encourage young couples to wed and have children to boost the country’s declining population.

Declining interest in getting married and starting a family has long been blamed on the high cost of childcare and education in China. On top of that, sputtering economic growth over the past few years has made it difficult for university graduates to find work and those that do have jobs feel insecure about their long-term prospects.

More than 6.1 million couples registered for marriage last year, down from 7.68 million a year earlier, figures from the Ministry of Civil Affairs showed.

“Unprecedented! Even in 2020, due to Covid-2019, marriages only decreased by 12.2%,” said Yi Fuxian, a demographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

He noted that the number of marriages in China last year was less than half of the 13.47 million in 2013.

If this trend continues, “the Chinese government’s political and economic ambitions will be ruined by its demographic Achilles’ heel,” he added.

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  • @[email protected]OPEnglish
    5•2 days ago

    Addition: Fertility rate appears to be lowest in China worldwide, EU and the U.S. are a bit higher. You can see these and other countries here (you can search for other countries using the search field at the top of the diagram in the link).

    • @[email protected]English
      3•2 days ago

      Another knot in the noose is that there are already 400 million people of age to retire and collect a pension, and not enough money going into the funds to pay for the people who will be retiring in the next few decades. So the younger generations, which still come from families that had children when the one-child policy was in effect, are having to work harder to support several people, both parents and all four grandparents. With so little free time, how does anyone have the time to meet and form a meaningful relationship with someone else, let alone get married and have children?

      The one-child policy may have seemed like a good idea when it was implemented, but hindsight has shown that it might end up having been disastrous for the economy. For the sake of the workers in China, I hope the government figures something out to help, but I’m not gonna pretend I have any ideas, because I’m just an idiot on the internet and I don’t.