“If starting a family stands in the way of their own development and happiness, they will opt out of giving birth, or even marriage.”
The year-after-year decline in new marriages aligns with the country’s shrinking population, which fell by 850,000 in 2022 – marking the first time deaths outnumbered births since 1961.
The number of newborns also dropped below 10 million last year for the first time in modern history, intensifying concerns surrounding China’s deepening demographic crisis and sparking new rounds of discussions about how to encourage births.
Rising costs of living and getting married; the falling number of young people; the deep-rooted cultural preference for sons; and the rising average age of those who do get married are all factors that have contributed to fewer weddings, according to independent demographer He Yafu.
Last year, the number of individuals – rather than couples – who got married for the first time saw a year-on-year decline of almost 700,000, to 11.6 million, according to the China Statistics Yearbook 2022. This was fewer than half the 23.9 million people who had their first wedding in 2013.
And the average age of people getting married for the first time has also increased significantly, from 24.89 in 2010 to 28.67 in 2020, according to the China Population Census Yearbook 2020.
Changing cultural and societal norms are also playing a big part in these decisions.
In traditional Chinese culture, one’s life may be considered incomplete without a spouse, and a family may be considered incomplete if there is no child.
Young Chinese parents have traditionally struggled and toiled away to finance their children, but now young people are increasingly putting that money toward financing themselves, demographer Yuan added.
In addition, fewer families are opting to have any babies. China’s firstborn fertility rate – the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime – fell from 0.7 in 2019 to 0.5 in 2022, further dragging down the birth rates for second and third children. And the average age of women having their first child increased during those three years from 26.4 to 27.4.
The number of divorces also rose from 1978 until 2019, when the number surpassed 4 million. In 2021, a new law required couples to wait 30 days before their divorce could be finalised, and divorces plunged to 2.1 million in 2022.
