As the world’s second biggest economy slows, an increasing number of people are opting to stay single due to poor job prospects amid record youth unemployment and chronically low consumer confidence, leading to a record slump in marriage registrations in 2022.
I did not fully get from the article what exactly it is that makes marriage too expensive? Surely getting a marriage certificate is not prohibitively expensive? And shared / dual income would make it easier to stay on top of finances…
This reluctance to tie the knot is worrying policymakers grappling with a decline in births and a rapidly aging population in a country that was once the world’s most populous, and where marriage rates are closely tied to birth rates as unmarried mothers are often denied child-raising benefits.
I heard the CCP wanted birth rates to climb. That’s not how you do it. The slowing economy doesn’t have to have this effect on young people. The Chinese government has a much stronger ability to manage these effects than democratic free market economies. I hope they would manage to use that.
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