Over the years, the Ministry of Civil Affairs' Statistical Bulletin on the Development of Civil Affairs has included data on the age of the population registered for marriage in that year.
For example, the data for 2017 is as follows: "In 2017, marriage registration for the age of 25-29 accounted for the largest proportion of the total marriage population, accounting for 369%”。
However, such data is not enough to give us an idea of the age distribution of the marriage registration population in that year. Since 2018, the Statistical Bulletin on the Development of Civil Affairs has included the age distribution of the married population in the form of a percentage chart.
For example, in the 2022 communiqué, it is marked in the chart like this, 20 24 years old 20780,000 people, 25 29 years old 50910,000,30 34 years old 28320,000 people, 35-39 years old 12490,000 people, 242 over 40 years old00,000 people.
For most people, it is difficult to quickly determine the proportion of people who have registered marriages by age group without the help of calculation tools. At this time, we need data visualization technology to use visual charts to show the age distribution of the national marriage registration population since 2018.
Since the focus of this article is on the change in the age of marriage, the specific values are omitted from the chart and only the proportion is considered.
In addition, the age statistics of marriage registration involve several situations: one is the age of the first marriage (this group, which will be shared in future data), and the other is the situation like this article that only looks at the age of the marriage registration population in the current year, and does not consider whether it is the first marriage, the second marriage or the remarriage within the year.
The age distribution of the marriage registration population over the past five years is shown in the figure below.
The data shows that in the past five years, on average, about 18% of people have not married until after the age of 40, which may be the age of divorce and remarriage, or the age of first marriage, or the age of divorce but remarriage in the same year.
Over the past five years, the proportion of married people aged 25 and over 40 has not always changed in a straight line, i.e. it has risen and fallen.
However, the proportion of married people aged 20 24, 30 34 and 35 39 years old varies in a straight line, with 20 24-year-olds declining and the remaining two age groups rising.
Over the past five years, the proportion of people married at the age of 30 and 39 has risen from 23 per cent to 29 per cent;The proportion of those married between the ages of 20 and 24 fell from 21 per cent to 15 per cent.
If you start elementary school at the age of six according to the normal calculation, and do not consider the repetition situation, you will be 22 years old after finishing your undergraduate degree, and you will fall in love for a year or two and then get married, which is already after the age of 25.
If you go to a master's degree for two and a half years, you will be 30 years younger than you will be married.
Therefore, receiving more years of education is an important reason why more people postpone marriage.
Postponing marriage (marrying first and having children is a high probability event) means that fewer people have children that year, and it also means that the number of births is decreasing. In fact, this is also an important reason for the decline in the number of births, probably more central than other factors.