Marriage and birth rates in China continue to steadily decline and are causing great concern in the Chinese government.
Data published by the Chinese Ministry of the Interior shows that the number of marriages in China last year reached its lowest point since records began in 1986, when 6.83 million marriage ceremonies were recorded - a decrease of 800 thousand marriage ceremonies compared to 2021.
Just a decade ago, in 2013, 13.5 million couples got married in China, double the number of marriages last year. Last year, China's population shrank for the first time in sixty years, leading the government to warn of an aging population.
Despite the Chinese government's attempts to encourage birth and marriage, the average age of women getting married in China has risen over the past decade from 24 to 29.
The Chinese government also announced in 2016 that it was abandoning the "one child" policy in the family and encouraged married couples to give birth to three children in order to maintain the country's demographics, and even offered financial assistance to families with several children, but the low birth rates continued.
In an attempt to increase the number of marriages in the country, several provinces in China are now offering fully paid "marriage leave" of up to 30 days to every couple who gets married. Simultaneously with the decrease in the number of marriages, there was also a decrease in the number of divorces in China.
In 2022, 2.1 million cases of divorce were recorded, after in 2021 the Chinese government passed a law forcing spouses seeking a divorce to go through a "cooling off period" of 30 days, in the hope that their relationship will improve.