China has announced that the nine-year streak of declining marriage registrations in the country ended last year.
According to the data, the number of newlywed couples rose to 7.68 million, which was a rise of 845,000 compared with 2022.
The data comes days after China’s Premier Li Qiang said that the government would work towards “a birth-friendly society and promote long term, balanced population development.”
Since 2013, China has been experiencing a sharp decline in the number of people getting married. Along with marriages, there has also been a fall in birth rate raising concerns that the 1.4 billion people could be ageing faster than thought initially.
Beijing ended its one-child policy in 2016 and since 2021 has offered incentives to couples to have bigger families. Some provinces have announced a reward of $110 to newly aged brides.
The fall in marriage rates has been attributed to unemployment, high costs of having a family along with young couples not warning to marry. According to China, the country’s urban unemployment rate among young people ages 16 to 24 reached a record high of 21.3% in June 2023. Since then, the government has not released any figures on unemployment.
Policymakers in China have been trying to find ways and means to reverse a declining population. It is estimated that in the coming decades around 300 million are expected to enter retirement in the coming decade – the equivalent of almost the entire US population.
Data from 2010 to 2020 shows that the Chinese youth have been delaying their marriage. In 2010 it was 25.75 years old for men and 24 for women. In 2020, that rose to 29.38 years old for men and 27.95 for women.
Along with marriages, the official data also showed that 2.59 million couples registered for uncontested divorces in 2023, up from 2.1 million the year before.
Officials believe that the increase in the number of marriages in 2023, combined with the impact of the auspicious Year of the Dragon in the Chinese zodiac, is expected to bring an increase in the birth population in 2024.
