China Made It Easier to Marry. Why Are Marriages at an 18-Year Low?

A couple in China can now register their marriage without going back to the place where their household is officially registered. The government removed that requirement in May 2025. Marriages rebounded that year.

The lift was short-lived.

China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs reported 4.648 million marriage registrations in the first nine months of 2026, almost 10 per cent fewer than in the same period last year. Yicai put that January-to-September total at an 18-year low.

What exactly hit an 18-year low?

The number of couples who registered a marriage from January through September. The ministry’s figures are a count, including couples marrying for the first time and those remarrying. A marriage rate would tell you how many marriages there were per 1,000 people. The two measures answer different questions.

The decline gathered pace through the year. Yicai reported about 1.37 million registrations from July to September, down roughly 15 per cent from the same quarter a year earlier. That was the second-lowest third quarter in its series, behind 2024.

Why did China change where people could marry?

To make the paperwork easier for people living away from home. Under China’s household registration system, known as hukou, a person can live and work in one city while their official household registration remains somewhere else. The May 2025 change removed the requirement to register a marriage in the place tied to that record. For a couple working away from home, that could save a trip simply to get a certificate.

The change could also affect when an already engaged couple files the paperwork. If couples who had been putting it off registered as soon as the rules changed, that would lift the count for a while. The national figures cannot tell us how much of the 2025 rebound came from that kind of catch-up.

Are young people marrying later or giving up on marriage?

There is clear evidence of later first marriages. A study using Chinese census data put women’s average age at first marriage at 24 in 2010 and about 28 in 2020. The researchers found that the increase looked smaller once they accounted for the changing mix of ages in the population. Even after that adjustment, the trend towards later marriage remained.

A fall in registrations can happen because fewer young adults are entering the ages when people typically marry, because people are waiting longer, or because fewer will ever marry. Those possibilities can overlap. If a 27-year-old marries at 31, her wedding disappears from this year’s count and shows up four years later. To see whether more people are staying single for life, demographers need to follow generations over time. Nine months of registrations can’t settle it.

Why does Beijing watch weddings when it wants more babies?

Marriage is still the usual starting point for having children in China. A 2026 study drawing on Chinese and international survey data found that couples were marrying and having their first child later, while the share of births outside marriage showed no clear upward trend. When fewer couples marry, that can mean fewer first births later. The size and timing of any change depend on what couples do after they marry, and on births to people who were already married.

The figures for 2025 show why the wedding register is a rough guide. Marriage registrations rose 10.8 per cent to 6.765 million that year. Births fell from 9.54 million to 7.92 million. A couple who married late in 2025 could have a child in 2026 or later. They could also decide against having one.

Can cash or cheaper childcare change the decision?

Both can ease a bill. Whether that changes when people start a family, or how many children they have, is a different question. China’s national childcare subsidy sets a basic payment of 3,600 yuan per year for each eligible child under three. Its 2026 government work report also pledged more housing support for first-time married couples and families having their first child.

A wedding grant can reduce the cost of getting married. A childcare subsidy can help with the early years. To measure whether either policy led to additional marriages or births, researchers would need to compare similar groups with different access to the support and track them over time. A rise or fall in the national count alone gives no such comparison.

Why is India still growing with fertility below replacement?

India still has a large generation of young people who are reaching the ages at which people tend to have children. India’s 2023–24 National Family Health Survey puts total fertility at 2.0 children per woman, below the benchmark of about 2.1 at which a generation replaces itself over the long run. Even with fewer children per woman, a large generation of parents can produce enough births to outnumber deaths for years. China recorded 11.31 million deaths and 7.92 million births in 2025. The age mix helps explain how two countries can have low fertility and still be moving in different directions.

Which figures will tell us whether couples are catching up?

The full-year registration total will show whether the late-year numbers soften the decline. A breakdown of first marriages by age would tell us more. If marriages pick up among people in their thirties, some of the weddings missing from the count may have been postponed. If successive generations are less likely to have married by the same age, the shift may run deeper. Births by age of the mother and by birth order would then show whether later weddings are being followed by later first babies, or by smaller families.