As China’s population ages and its workforce shrinks, the country is facing some big demographic challenges. Among them: encouraging couples to have more children and encouraging young people to get married.

According to data released last week, more than half of Chinese between the ages of 25 and 29 remained unmarried in 2023. That number is in line with marriage rates for the same age group in many developed countries, but a sharp drop compared with figures from just a decade ago for China.

For many young Chinese, there are a growing number of reasons not to tie the knot.

“Marriage, childbirth, and loans for houses and cars are all liabilities, which are overdrafts from the future,” said 32-year-old Zhang Yu when asked why he’s not married. “When the economic downturn is obvious, if there is no source of income, we can only reduce expenditures.”

Zhang lives in northeast China and works for an infrastructure company that imposed salary cuts in 2023. He says salaries dropped by about 30%.

“I am also secretly glad I did not marry and have children. Otherwise, I would have been in big trouble,” said Zhang, who asked to use a pseudonym in order to speak candidly to VOA.

China’s sluggish economy and high youth unemployment rate in 2023 added to the worries that young Chinese are facing. Analysts are not optimistic about China’s economic outlook in 2024.

Jacey Zhang is a single 27-year-old from Beijing who currently lives with her parents. Mocking herself and her plight, she calls herself a “frustrated loser in society.”

“Without a job, you can’t find a spouse,” she told VOA. However, she said that given her current situation, it is easier to be single than to get married.

“One person has enough to eat, and the whole family is not hungry,” she said.

She told reporters that even though her parents can afford her living at home, her family is not very well off financially, and getting married would cost more money.

Fang Xu, a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, sees a connection between low marriage rates and record high youth unemployment.

She believes that the popular trend of “lying flat,” or rejecting intense competition or social expectations, has not only affected young people’s careers but also plans for marriage.

“You have to lie flat in your career, and then you also have to lie flat for marriage and childbirth, because you don’t have the money to have children and get married,” she said.

According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, the country’s urban unemployment rate among young people ages 16 to 24 reached a record high of 21.3% in June 2023. After that, Chinese authorities stopped releasing the figure. Some estimates put the rate as high as 40%.

Zhang said that due to financial reasons, his friends are unwilling to have children, even if they are married. He has also met several women on blind dates who made it clear that they want to be DINK — dual income, no kids.

The “China Population and Employment Statistics Yearbook 2023,” published last December, shows that among people of all ages, the unmarried rate is 51.3% in the 25–29 age group, 18.4% in the 30-34 age group, and 8% in the 35–39 age group.

Marriage policies

Some local governments have introduced policies to promote marriage. The Changshan County government in Zhejiang province would reward newlywed brides 25 years old and under with $150 — a small amount that drew swift criticism online.

One commenter named Jianghu Li Fuxiang said, “If getting married is a good thing, why do you have to push for it? Who wouldn’t want free money?”

According to social media giant Tencent’s “White Paper on Marriage Industry Insights in 2021,” the average spending per couple on a wedding was $25,000 in 2020.

While Tencent’s report said the pandemic didn’t appear to have an impact on spending, COVID-19 did make some parents focus more on health and less on pushing their only child to get married.

China’s draconian zero-COVID measures also made it hard for people to go out or get necessities for their daily lives, and many young people had to shelve their plans for marriage and childbirth.

According to the “China Statistical Yearbook 2023,” the total number of Chinese citizens married for the first time in 2022 was 10.5 million, a decrease of more than 1 million from the year before.

According to the latest statistical quarterly report released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs of China, the total number of couples who married in 2022 was 6.8 million, a 10.5% decrease from 2021 and a new low since 1986. That compares to 13.47 million couples who were married in 2013.

Chinese are also waiting longer to marry. The average age of couples registering to marry has gradually shifted from under 24 years of age in 2013 to over 30 in the latest figures.

Although the marriage rate rebounded somewhat in 2023, the number of divorces also increased. In the first three quarters of 2023, China registered 5.7 million marriages and 2 million divorces. Compared with the same period in 2022, marriage registrations increased by 245,000 pairs, while divorce registrations increased by 330,000 pairs.

In October, Chinese President Xi Jinping said it was necessary for women to “actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and childbearing and strengthen guidance on young people’s views on marriage, childbirth, and family.”

Xu, the lecturer at UC Berkeley, said this has led many to ask why they should follow that advice.

“As a woman, I have a college degree. You want me to give up my career, be a good wife and mother, and serve you? Why should I live such a life?”

Zhang said different political positions also affect people’s marriages. He said his values are very different from those of many women he met on blind dates. He calls himself a “rebel who gets [anti-China] news on Twitter.” But he said the women he dated are not interested in politics.

VOA