China’s marriage rate has fallen to its lowest level in 18 years, new official figures show, deepening concern about the country’s shrinking birth rate and the strain of a rapidly ageing population.
A total of 4.65 million couples married between January and the end of September, according to data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs published this week. The figure was the lowest for the first nine months of a year since 2008, local news outlet Yicai reported on Friday. In the same period, 2.08 million couples divorced.
The decline matters because childbearing in China remains closely tied to marriage. Fewer weddings today point to fewer births tomorrow, and the country’s population has already fallen for four consecutive years, with the birth rate dropping to a record low in 2025.
Beijing has rolled out a series of measures in recent years to encourage marriage and childbearing, including family subsidies, childcare support and reduced childbirth-related medical costs. Officials have also pledged to weave youth development into urban planning, housing, healthcare, education and public services, in a broader push to make city life more supportive for young people, children and families.
So far, the incentives have not reversed the trend. Young Chinese cite the high cost of housing and raising children, long working hours and uncertain job prospects as reasons to delay or forgo marriage altogether, a pattern familiar across much of East Asia.
The demographic shift is already reshaping the economy. China is now supporting more elderly people than children, with the old-age dependency ratio surpassing that of children for the first time. Demographers warn the imbalance will only widen: the number of women of reproductive age — defined by the United Nations as 15 to 49 — is set to fall by more than two-thirds to under 100 million by the end of the century.
That prospect carries long-term consequences for the workforce, pension system and consumer demand in the world’s second-largest economy, and it helps explain why Beijing has made reversing the marriage and birth-rate decline a stated priority, even as the data continue to move in the opposite direction.
Sources: Reuters, “China’s marriage rate in third quarter tumbles to 18-year low”, 6 November 2026 (https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-marriage-rate-third-quarter-tumbles-18-year-low-2026-11-06/)
