Study: The average cost of marriage in China is as high as 330,000

Interface News Reporter | Zhao Meng

Interface News Editor | Liu Haichuan

Declining fertility rates have become a common trend in countries around the world. East Asia, including China, has become the region with the lowest fertility level in the world, and the expansion of the group of non-married and late marriage, infertility and childbearing is one of the important reasons for this phenomenon.

Yang Fan, Guo Pinrui and Liu Jiannan, scholars from the Population and Development Research Center of Renmin University of Chinese, published a paper entitled "The Situation, Influencing Factors and Policy Responses of Unmarried, Infertile and Childbearing in China" in the latest issue of Population Research, based on the latest special survey data, to conduct an in-depth analysis of this problem.

Scholars have conducted a lot of research on the situation and reasons for the delay of marriage and childbearing in China. However, most of these studies are based on census or sample survey data to describe the phenomenon of delayed marriage and childbearing in China at the macro level, and lack in-depth and detailed analysis of the groups of non-marital and late marriage, infertility and childbearing groups, and most of the research background is the era of population size control, which does not fully reflect the changes in people's willingness and behavior to marry and have children under the background of rapid social and economic development, nor does it examine people's reactions to various fertility support policies in recent years.

Different from the general analysis of childbearing age groups in previous studies, this paper is based on the data of a special survey of China's non-marital, infertile and childbearing groups organized by the Population and Development Research Center of Minmin University of Chinese from July to September 2023. Based on the special survey data of three specific childbearing age groups, infertility and late childbearing and less childbearing, this paper conducts in-depth research on people's willingness to marry and have children and their influencing factors under the background of the current fertility policy, and comprehensively analyzes the subjective and objective factors affecting the marriage and childbearing decisions of the childbearing age group at the present stage, so as to provide rich empirical support for the formulation of relevant marriage and childbearing support policies.

The study shows that the traditional culture of universal marriage and universal parenting in China has not changed, and most people in the non-marriage and infertile group still hope to get married and have children, which is very different from the dilution of the value of marriage and family reflected in the demographic transition process in Western countries. This tradition of universal marriage and universal childbearing is a favorable factor in the Chinese national culture that can promote the improvement of fertility level. The delay in marrying or having children among these groups is mainly due to the constraints of real conditions. Therefore, it is necessary to provide them with better marriage and childbirth support policies, solve their worries about marriage and childbirth decisions, and help them realize their willingness to marry and have children, so as to release the potential of the population, stimulate the vitality of the population, and achieve high-quality population development.

In this study, the group of non-married and late marriages refers to people who have exceeded the national average age for first marriage (28.67 years), but are not yet married. This group includes women and men aged 30 to 45 years as of the survey standard point and who have never been married. They may have postponed marriage for various reasons, but there is still a possibility of getting married. Infertile and late childbearing groups refer to those who are married but have not yet given birth, and who have been giving birth later than the national average. The childbearing group is those who have already given birth to one child, but the number of children is less than their ideal number of children.

According to the survey on the willingness to marry of the group who do not marry and marry late, only 20% of the respondents do not plan to get married in the future, and most of them still have the intention to enter marriage. Older unmarried people always have a stereotype of reluctance to get married, but from the results of this paper, most of them still have expectations and intentions for marriage; in addition, more than 60% of the respondents' actual age has exceeded their ideal age for marriage; the traditional "right match" mate selection criteria have been loosened, and people have become more concerned about personality and personality.

It is worth noting that among the factors influencing the marriage decision of the group that does not marry and marries late, economic pressure has become the most important factor restricting people's marriage decision. According to the survey results, 63.78% of the respondents agreed that the financial pressure brought about by marriage was very high. In terms of gender, the proportion of male respondents (66.98%) who perceived high economic pressure was significantly higher than that of female respondents (60.60%). Only 17 per cent of those who do not marry and marry later have a separate marital home ready for marriage, and nearly eight in ten of those surveyed said that their parents bought or built at least half of the marital home. Studies have shown that in areas with higher housing prices, men and women enter marriage later, confirming the impact of home buying pressure on people's marriage behavior.

According to the results of this survey, the average cost of marriage is as high as 330,400 yuan, which is more than 8 times the per capita disposable income of residents in 2023 (39,200 yuan), reflecting that the cost of marriage has brought heavy economic pressure to both husband and wife and even their families. In addition, the time cost of falling in love or getting married is high, and this is often overlooked.

According to the survey, more than seventy percent (72.25%) of the respondents said that they had the experience of being urged to marry by their parents, relatives and friends, and people were more vulnerable to the negative impact of the unhappy marriage experience of those around them than the "push" effect brought by the urging to marry. Specifically, 32.77% of the respondents said that the unhappiness of their parents, relatives and friends affected their marriage decisions.

For the infertile and late childbearing groups, 78.49% of the respondents had a family plan. The average ideal number of children was 1.09, of which 1.08 were females and 1.11 were males, and the average number of planned children was 0.99, of which 0.96 were females and 1.01 were males. The fertility intention of the infertile and late childbearing groups covered in this survey is much lower than the national average, and most of them are still willing to have children and have plans to have children.

For the factors influencing the fertility decision-making of the infertile and late childbearing groups, this survey asked the respondents about the impact of various factors on the fertility decision-making, and the most influential factor for the decision of whether to have children is "whether there is someone to take care of the child", nearly seventy percent (69.32%) of the respondents believe that this factor has a great impact on their fertility decision-making, followed by "social environment" (52.38%) and "fertility support policy" (46.76%). It can be seen that whether they can get enough fertility support (including economic support and service support) is an important factor affecting whether this childless group has children.

Another meaningful finding of the survey is that 76% of the respondents ranked "mutual companionship and emotional comfort" as the top three main reasons for marriage, while only 30.15% of the respondents ranked "starting a family and raising children" as the top three main reasons for marriage, "which reflects that the main purpose of most people getting married at this stage is to obtain spiritual value, and childbearing is no longer a necessity for marriage."

The survey also asked married respondents (infertility, infertility, and those with two or more children) about the impact of these fertility support policies (three-child policies and supporting measures) on their fertility plans. The results showed that more than two out of ten respondents believed that the birth support policy had a positive effect on their family planning, but more than six out of ten respondents believed that the policy had no impact. Among them, the group that has two or more children has the most positive evaluation of the policy, and about three-tenths say that the fertility support policy is conducive to their family planning.

The demand for fertility support policies among different groups is differentiated, with the unmarried and late childbearing groups paying particular attention to "housing subsidies or public rental housing" and "improving pregnancy and childbirth health care services", the infertile and late childbearing groups tend to "flexible office or home office" and "extending women's maternity leave", and the young childbearing groups value "housing subsidies or public rental housing allocation" and "flexible office or home office", indicating that they are concerned about the increase in housing demand and time cost after rebirth.

The authors suggest that by accurately understanding the actual needs and effect evaluation of fertility support policies of different groups, relevant policies should be formulated and optimized in a targeted manner, so as to alleviate the pressure of marriage and childbearing among different groups and effectively solve their personalized worries about fertility.