In the first quarter, the number of registered marriages in China decreased by 1.2%, and 514,000 couples were registered for divorce.

　　In recent years, the number of married people in China has been decreasing, the average age of marriage has been increasing, and the number of single people has been expanding. In the first quarter of this year, what changes have taken place in the number of marriages and divorces in China?

　　According to the latest statistics released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs in the first quarter, there were 2.107 million couples registered in the first quarter. Compared with 2.132 million pairs in the first quarter of 2021, it decreased by 25,000 pairs, down 1.2% year-on-year.

　　This also continues the downward trend of the number of marriage registrations in China in recent years. The data shows that in 2021, China’s marriage registration data was 7.636 million pairs. This is the second time that the marriage registration data fell below 8 million pairs after falling below 10 million pairs in 2019 and 9 million pairs in 2020. The first financial reporter combed the data and found that the number of marriage registrations in 2021 hit a new low since 1986 (the website of the Ministry of Civil Affairs published data since 1986), which was only 56.6% of the peak in 2013.

　　The continuous decline in the number of married people is related to the decrease in the total number of marriageable people. On the other hand, this is also related to the significant delay in the first marriage age of young people, especially the post-90s generation. China Census Yearbook -2020 recently released by the National Bureau of Statistics shows that,2020In 2008, the average age of first marriage in China was 28.67 years, which was 3.78 years higher than the average age of first marriage in 2010.

　　Judging from the decline since 2016, in the first quarter of 2020, affected by epidemic factors, the data is not comparable, and the number of marriage registrations in the first quarter of other years decreased by more than 5% year-on-year. However, in the first quarter of this year, it only dropped slightly by 1.2% compared with the same period of last year, which also shows that,After years of rapid decline, the number of marriage registrations in China may have entered a relatively stable platform period, which will also have a significant impact on the birth population data in China in the future.

　　Judging from the number of divorce registrations, there were 514,000 couples in the first quarter of this year, an increase of 218,000 couples over the first quarter of 2021. However, since the cooling-off period system for divorce began to be implemented in 2021, that is, within 30 days after the expiration of the cooling-off period for divorce, if both parties fail to jointly apply to the marriage registration office for a divorce certificate, the application for divorce registration will be deemed to have been withdrawn. The implementation of this system just started in the first quarter of last year, and there will be a delay effect on the whole, so the divorce registration data in the first quarter of 2021 is not comparable. Compared with 1.048 million couples in the first quarter of 2019, the number of divorce registrations in the first quarter of this year decreased by 51%.

　　Registration data of marriage and divorce in the first quarter of China and other places (data source: Ministry of Civil Affairs)

　　In terms of provinces, in the first quarter, there were 7 provinces in China with more than 100,000 couples registered for marriage, namely Sichuan, Guangdong, Henan, Anhui, Guizhou, Shandong and Jiangsu. Among them, Sichuan ranked first with 169,000 pairs, Guangdong ranked second with 155,000 pairs, and Henan ranked third with 154,000 pairs. In terms of divorce registration, Sichuan ranked first with 45,000 couples, and Guangdong and Henan both had 33,000 couples.

　　Because marriage and divorce are mainly linked to the registered population. Therefore, including Sichuan, Henan, Guizhou and other provinces with large population outflows, the Spring Festival is a good opportunity to get married, and many people get married when they go home during the Spring Festival, so there are more people getting married in the first quarter.