China's marriage registrations to fall record low in 2024, says expert

China's marriage registrations in 2024 were set to register a record low since 1980, a demographic expert has warned after the marriage registrations in the first half of this year fell by 498,000, heightening the country's looming demographic crisis.

The fall in marriage numbers was expected to add to the declining birth rates, which have been steadily falling over the years amid the rapid rise of the ageing population.

The latest statistics from China's Ministry of Civil Affairs show that 3.43 mn Chinese couples got married during the first half of 2024, a drop of 498,000 couples compared to the same period from last year, state-run Global Times reported on Monday. It said that 1.27 million couples also got divorced.

He Yafu, an independent demographic expert who tracks marriage registration data, predicted that based on the present trend, the annual figure of marriage registrations in 2024 will drop to a record low since 1980.

The decline in the number of marriage registrations since 2014 was attributed to a decrease in the young population, the gender imbalance with more men than women among the marriageable population, the postponement of the age of first marriage, high costs of getting married, and changing attitudes toward marriage.

He said the continued decline in the number of marriage registrations in 2024 indicates that the number of new-borns will go downward again in 2025.

Due to factors such as the decrease in the young population and low childbirth intentions, the declining trend in China's birth rate, in the long run, will be difficult to fundamentally change unless substantial childbirth support policies are implemented in the future to address this challenge, the report quoted him as saying.

China's population continued to decline as the overall population fell by 2.08 mn last year to 1.40 bn, down from 1.41 bn in 2022, as India overtook China to become the most populous country in the world in 2023, according to official data released early this year.

China's population reported its first decline in six decades in 2022 after the birth rate hit a new low, resulting in decades of the child policy pursued vigorously by the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) to control population growth, with experts predicting a steeper decline in the coming years.

Researchers warned that the Chinese economy, which, in the past significantly benefited from a demographic dividend, will have to tackle challenges including fewer working-age people, weaker spending power and a strained social security system as its population ages further.

China's overall population is set to see a steeper decline in the coming years, said Professor Peng Xizhe from the Centre for Population and Development Policy Studies at Fudan University.

It's almost certain the population will go on with negative growth, Peng told the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post early this year.

The demographic crisis was largely attributed to a decades-old one-child policy that was scrapped in 2016, after which China permitted all couples to have two children.

In 2021, China passed a revised Population and Family Planning Law allowing Chinese couples to have three children and announced a number of incentives to encourage people to have more children, in an apparent attempt to address the reluctance of couples to have more kids due to mounting costs.