Marriage aspiration gap in China

Until recently, Chinese low fertility was idiosyncratic. Unlike other below-replacement fertility countries, China still saw high rates of motherhood, despite discouraging families from having more than one child. That may be changing. A new IFS-Wheatley survey shows that just around half of unmarried Chinese women ages 18 to 34 say they would like to get married someday. Since marriage and childbearing are tightly connected in Chinese culture, this suggests that motherhood will decline, too. Notably, China has the largest gap in marriage aspirations between men and women among the eight countries surveyed: three-quarters of unmarried Chinese men still say they would like to get married.

by Peter Foreshaw Brookes, Grant Bailey