China's single population to reach 400 million, youths staring at being single for life

Beijing: In the face of plummeting marriage rates and the soaring divorce rate, Chinese youths risk being unmarried for life.

According to a recent survey, unmarried young people over 30 are widespread in China. Many young men and women in cities choose to be single, while many young men in rural areas are eliminated from the marriage market, reported Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblogging website. China's population is shrinking for the first time in more than six decades in 2022, which is a serious demographic crisis for the country with significant implications for its slowing economy, CNN Business reported.
According to China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the population fell from the previous year by some 850,000 people as it recorded to 1.411 billion in the year 2022.

According to data surveyed in late January last month show that unmarried youths over the age of 30 are very common among men and women.
The survey conducted by Wuhan University covered 425 cities/counties/districts in China's 34 provincial-level administrative regions.

The survey throws some alarming reality of present-day society. There are significant differences between urban and rural single. In the urban community, it is common for young men and women to marry late; in rural society, it is common for young men to face lifelong singleness, reported Sina Weibo.

Data analysis results show that - in cities, many single young men and women are the result of active choices. An ideology that being "single" is also a good life spreads in urban and rural societies.

In county towns, although a considerable number of women in the system are willing to marry, they are single due to the lack of high-quality male resources and unwillingness to give in.

In rural areas, a considerable number of unmarried young men over 30 have already been eliminated from the marriage market and are likely to face the risk of never marrying for life, added Sina Weibo.

China's single population is to reach 400 million. In recent years, China's marriage rate has continued to decline. The marriage situation of rural youths has attracted the attention of public opinion, and the issue of "difficulty for older rural men and youths to get married" has aroused heated discussions.
According to data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs of China, the single adult population in China reached 240 million in 2018. The number of marriage registrations in 2021 was only 7.636 million, a new low since 1986.
As China's marriage rate has declined in recent years and the divorce rate has continued to rise, it is estimated that China's single population will reach 400 million in the future, reported Sina Weibo.

In the face of the soaring divorce rate, China issued a regulation last year that forces couples who want to break up to go through a 30-day "calm down period" before a final divorce in an attempt to reduce the divorce rate.

Falling marriage rates have led to a sharp drop in the birth rate, a sign of growing concern in a rapidly ageing Chinese society. Many young Chinese say they would rather not get married because jobs are getting harder to find, competition is fiercer, and the cost of living is getting out of hand.

Even if they get married, many Chinese couples prefer not to have children. The reason is that they are worried about the rising cost of education and the fact that there will be a burden on life if there are seniors and younger ones, added Sina Weibo.
Worried about a shrinking population, the Chinese government has for years introduced policies to encourage marriage and having children.

Strict family planning regulations have been revised twice in the past decade. First, it ended the decades-old "one-child" policy in 2015 and later allowed married couples to have three children.
Some cities have even come up with various incentives, such as extra vacation time for newlyweds and better maternity leave and protections for working mothers, to encourage marriage and to have children. However, since 2014, the marriage rate has declined every year. (ANI)