China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs released data on Monday showing marriage applications declined from 7.68 million in 2023 to just 6.1 million in 2024 – a 20-percent decline that does not bode well for China’s efforts to pull itself out of a demographic death spiral.
China’s birth rate (compared to total population) perked up very slightly in 2024, according to data released by the government’s National Bureau of Statistics in January. The increase in births was a tiny hopeful sign, but demographic experts warned it was probably transitory – a product of marriages delayed by China’s brutal coronavirus lockdowns finally becoming fruitful and unusual enthusiasm for having babies during the Year of the Dragon, considered the most favorable year in the Chinese zodiac for childbirth.
Even with the birth bump last year, China’s overall population still declined because deaths outnumbered births. Monday’s data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs showed marriage falling off a cliff, plus divorce increasing by a little over one percent. This all but guarantees birth rates will plummet again following the Year of the Dragon, since births out of wedlock are relatively rare in China.
Last year’s marriage numbers were the lowest total posted by China since 1980 and less than half what the country reported in 2013. Even with the modest bump in births, 2024 saw the smallest number of children born since the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949.
“Unprecedented! Even in 2020, due to Covid-19, marriages only decreased by 12.2 per cent,” exclaimed University of Wisconsin-Madison demographer Yi Fuxian when the Ministry of Civil Affairs data was released.
Yi predicted the “political and economic ambitions” of the Chinese Communist government would be “ruined by its demographic Achilles heel.” The decline in marriage and childbirth is wreaking havoc upon economic plans that assumed the population of young workers would keep growing for many years to come.
China’s demographic crisis was greatly exacerbated by the brutal “One Child” policy of forced abortions, which eliminated a huge number of young women from the marriage pool between the 1970s and 2015, when the policy was finally rescinded. Many parents felt that if they could only have one child, they would rather have a boy.
Demographers also believe China is suffering from the incredibly rapid pace of urbanization during its boom years, which began in the 1980s and sputtered out in the 2010s. When the Chinese economy was roaring, countless young people decided to move from rural areas to big cities, in search of lucrative high-tech jobs. Birth rates are much lower in China’s cities, especially since career-minded women are reluctant to put their professional lives on hold in order to raise children.
The crumbling of the booming Chinese economy introduced another downward influence on birth rates: soaring youth unemployment. The unemployment rate is hovering around 17 percent among Chinese people under 24 years old, which is crippling the confidence of the most fertile age cohort. The scarcity of good jobs means young people are reluctant to make marriage commitments, or take on the huge financial burden of children. Many young Chinese are returning home to live with their parents, which makes it harder for them to create homes and families of their own.
Chinese social media buzzed over the declining marriage figures on Monday, with many commentators blaming the mixture of ennui and live-for-the-moment self-absorption that has gripped young people.
“Life is already so tiring. Who has the courage to get married?” asked one user on Weibo, China’s heavily-censored version of X.
