Chinese people are in no hurry to tie the knot

陈小将

The average age of first marriage of Chinese people stood at 28.67 in 2020 after continuously rising since 2010, China News Service reported on Friday, citing the statistical yearbook released by the National Bureau of Statistics recently.

Data show the average age at which Chinese men and women married for the first time was around 29.38 and 27.95 respectively, in 2020, around four years increase compared with 2010.

The statistics also showed a declining trend in the number of people getting married for the first time in recent years, dropping from 22 million in 2010 to around 12.89 million in 2020.

Last year, the average age of first marriage of men and women in Hangzhou was 28.5 and 27.1 in 2021, an increase of 0.2 year and 0.3 year, respectively, compared with the previous year.

The trend is true in other cities too, with the average age of first marriage over 30 in some regions. In East China's Anhui province, the average age of men and women at first marriage was 31.89 and 30.73, respectively.

Driven by the trend of delaying first marriage, there were only about 8.13 million new marriages registered nationwide in 2020, down 12.2 percent year-on-year, a decrease for the seventh straight year, according to the country's civil affairs bureau.

"Rising education levels, high cost of marriage, fierce societal competition and the changes in attitudes toward marriage all contribute to the delay," said Feng Wenmeng, director of the Research Office of the Institute for Public Administration and Human Resource, at the Development Research Center of the State Council.

He said that women who delay marriage could miss their prime child-bearing years and increase the pregnancy risks, which will negatively affect the fertility rate of the whole society. But he also said that it should be fully acknowledged that getting married later is a common phenomenon in the world and active measures should be taken to counterbalance the negative factors unfavorable to marriage and childbearing.

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