Before discussing China’s Marriage and childbirth data, two sets of data are given for our neighbors, Japan and South Korea, in 2013 and 2020, respectively.
Frankly speaking, Koreans are having a much harder Time than Japan. Although the younger generation in Japan is facing difficulties in buying a house in the Greater Tokyo area, and even invented the odd apartment like the bullet-shaped apartment, Japan’s social welfare system has been very well developed, the health care and pension systems are quite good, and in fact, the housing prices in the Tokyo area have not increased much for nearly 25 years, and the annual increase can not even keep up with the Inflation rate. And as long as you leave the Tokyo area, other areas of Japan are cheap, the average middle-class annual income of 5-7 years, you can definitely buy a detached house with a yard in the non-Tokyo core area of Japan. In this context, Japanese people still maintain enthusiasm for marriage, the number of marriages fell by 12.6% in 2013-20, which is not outrageous.
As for the Korean side, the younger generation is really desperate. The Korean-style Zaibatsu system is not yet the same as The Japanese-style mega-conglomerate system. The Japanese style consortium actually does not completely block the upward path of ordinary young people, as far as ordinary people are concerned, after enough years of experience and contribution, the position will naturally be available. In South Korea, the slightly more decent job opportunities are highly controlled by the Zaibatsu insiders. At the same time, South Korea’s housing prices, like China, continued to skyrocket, Seoul’s housing prices in the past three years generally rose by more than 50%, and now the price has been generally in the RMB 100,000 / ㎡ above, just like China’s young people in the north, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, rely on their own want to buy a house is basically nonsense, it is not easy to save a few thousand dollars in hand, as well as fried shoes and fried blind box on the good. As for the non-Seoul area, the average middle class needs 10-15 years of annual income to be able to afford an ordinary apartment house. In this case, it is easy to understand that the younger generation in Korea refuses to get married, just because of the dual effect of lack of career paths + housing bubble. So, from 2013-20, the number of marriages in Korea dropped by 34.4%, far more than in Japan.
Marriage and birth population change between Japan and South Korea, 2013-20
Well, next let’s look at the situation in China. To be more visual, clearer and shocking, the table below gives data on the number of marriages and divorces in China from 1985 to the present, sourced from official data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics and Ministry of Civil Affairs.
Tracking domestic marriages in China since 1985
To clarify, the decline in the number of marriages from 1999 to 2002 was caused by the mass layoff of millions of state-owned enterprise employees at that time. Without jobs, of course, they would not get married. Only after that, along with China’s accession to the WTO and the shift of basic manufacturing from Europe and the US to the country, did the marriage figures start to improve. Well folks, next, the shocking data is here: after China reached a historical peak of 13.47 million marriages in 2013, it began a dramatic decline to 8.13 million in 2020, a cumulative drop of 39.6%! This rate of decline, not to mention Japan, even substantially exceeds that of South Korea, which is on the verge of a marriage collapse. I really don’t know what to say about this avalanche of data.
Well, young people in Korea are reluctant to get married because of the double blow of lack of career paths + housing bubble. And in China, it’s even worse. Let’s not talk about the housing price in China. In any case, no matter what city, the younger generation do not expect to save enough for a down payment by themselves is it. The only thing that I can say about this career path is that from 2010 to the present, what career category in China is still growing in terms of employment? Individuals! From 44.67 million employed in 2010 to 11.692 million in 2019, a doubling. The number of people employed in other types of occupations, whether state-owned enterprises or foreign enterprises, including private enterprises above the scale, there is no more growth to speak of. In fact it means that dry individual small bosses, delivery courier open drop, become the overall way out of the younger generation. This also talk about what career upward channel? What kind of marriage is this? Everyone is well, do not disturb each other, that is. Otherwise, the restaurant waitress girl and sweaty courier boy sitting together on a blind date, the two people look at each other, they want to spit on the ground, and go back to each other to pretend to be successful people spit on a blind date when they hit a dirt eight monsters, but also very hard things, very affect the time to hold the phone to play the game, and why bother.
Ladies and gentlemen, marriage is the basis for procreation. In about three years after marriage to give birth, is the common fertility law of the Chinese. This is reflected in the data that the number of marriages peaked in 2013, and in 2016, there was the peak of the country’s fertility in the last 10 years, 17.91 million births that year. Well, this phase peak data of 17.91 million people is actually very difficult, this is the peak number of marriages in 2013 + 2015 comprehensive two-child policy, the result of the simultaneous action of these two factors. And along with the collapse of the number of marriages since then and the completion of the release of the two-child policy dividend, the population birth data will of course drop dramatically.
So the logical thing to do occurred, and by 2019, China’s newborn population dropped to 14.65 million, an 18.2% drop from its peak in 2016. Let’s take this drop and compare it to the drop in marriages from 2013-2016 – 15.1% (1143/1347-1), which actually counts for the same order of magnitude and is mutually corroborative. We can also see this clearly in the data tables for Korea and Japan – the decline in the number of marriages is roughly the same ratio as the decline in the number of births.
Based on this logic, we can actually project the birth population in China in 2023: at least a 40% drop from the peak birth figure in 2016. And due to the complete disappearance of the two-child policy dividend, reaching 50% is possible. This means that in 2023, China’s birth population will be only about 9 million. What is this concept? 9.98 million people will die in China in 2019, and the number of deaths will probably increase by another 50,000-80,000 per year due to the aging of the population.
The aging of Chinese society is becoming more and more prominent
In other words, if the current situation continues unchanged, China will enter a state of natural population decline within 2 years at the latest.
The only way to completely reverse this situation is to change the situation that leads young people to resist marriage. It is not possible to expect a complete liberalization of birth restrictions to promote population growth. Mothers who have had their second child are generally over 40 this year, and there are not many left who can and will have children. In other words, we must give young people a career path and bring down housing prices. The difficulty of the career path is so great that it is impossible to achieve in the world, so we will not talk about it. If you read the article about the financial toughness of 31 cities, you will understand that at least 24 cities’ finances will collapse if housing prices are reduced, and the consequences will be incalculable. So, the only conclusion is: the amount of marriages will continue to fall, and the newborn population data, of course, will also fall.
At the end of this article, a word about divorce. In 1985, the frequency of divorce was only 5%, meaning that 100 people got married in China that year and only 5 got divorced. By 2020, the frequency of divorce has risen to 53%, which means that 100 people got married and 53 people got divorced. This divorce frequency is already alarmingly high. At this rate of play, if it continues for a few more years, basically one out of every two couples will be divorced. Marital stability is based on socio-economic stability. The lack of career paths + housing bubble is the biggest negative factor affecting social and economic stability. If the current surge in divorce frequency continues, it will exceed 60% by 2023, which means that if you get married, there is more than a 60% chance of divorce, which is higher than the 40% divorce frequency of black families in the US. What’s the point of getting married? Better to be single for Life.
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