Economic Observer Chen Yueqin/article

Recently, some local maternal and child health clinics have started to launch marriage registration services, integrating marriage registration, pre marital medical examinations, and pregnancy preparation guidance.

In order to improve the convenience of marriage registration, civil affairs systems in various regions have increased their innovation efforts in recent years, promoting the proliferation of certificate centers. According to incomplete statistics, marriage registration points have been set up in bank branches, subway stations, parks, libraries, museums, scenic spots, bars, and even tax bureaus.

The civil affairs system may have taken into account the long distance for eligible individuals to travel to the civil affairs bureau, the inconvenience of taking leave, and the dull experience of obtaining certificates. It is attempting to improve the process experience by using flowers, coffee, and internet celebrity check-in points to assist young people in completing registration.

Behind this well intentioned effort is the continuously declining marriage rate. The "2026 Q2 Civil Affairs Statistics Data" released in August this year showed that there were 3.275 million marriage registrations nationwide, a decrease of 264000 from the same period in 2025, setting a new historical low for the same period in over a decade; Compared to the historical peak of over 7.08 million pairs in the first half of 2013, it has shrunk by more than half.

The official setting creates a sense of wedding ceremony, and there is indeed positive feedback. In 2024, a marriage registration office was set up at the "Xingfu Ba Station" on the subway in Hefei, Anhui. Over the past two years, more than 6200 couples have been registered.

However, when such certification centers emerge in various occasions, this innovation begins to provoke ridicule and even backlash from young people. The pressure of 'marriage pressure everywhere' is spreading, which may have a counterproductive effect.

In fact, reducing the lifetime contract of marriage to a flash check-in is a kind of goodwill misalignment.

Certificate processing centers can be seen everywhere, but the decline in marriage data cannot be stopped. We cannot help but ask: why haven't young people gotten married even though the Civil Affairs Bureau has been relocated?

Fundamentally, marriage is an unlimited joint economic community contract in the legal sense, covering property co ownership, joint debt, long-term custody and support obligations, as well as extremely high cost termination penalties. In the current era of uncertainty, young people are instinctively wary of contracts with heavy assets and low liquidity.

Getting a certificate when going to the subway station or park only lowers the physical threshold for entering into a marriage contract, but it cannot offset the mortgage, childbirth, and education expenses that will be carried for decades to come. What young people are really worried about is the real pressure faced by both parties after obtaining the license, rather than the trouble of going to the Civil Affairs Bureau or the insufficient background for taking photos.

From the perspective of population structure, the population base that supports marriage is irreversibly shrinking, and the scale of eligible young people continues to shrink. The seventh national census data shows that from 2010 to 2020, the proportion of young people aged 15-35 in the total population decreased from 33.5% to 27.2%, which is highly consistent with the downward trend of marriage registration.

At the same time, the demand for mutual assistance in marriage among modern young people is decreasing. In the past, marriage was the smallest organizational form for sharing living costs and completing division of labor. But the development of modern urban commerce and technology is outsourcing the internal functions of households, such as dishwashers, floor scrubbers, food delivery, and household services. One person can maintain their livelihood by purchasing services, and the necessity of living together for survival is weakened.

If entering into a marriage means relinquishing freedom without achieving spiritual harmony, more and more young people are unwilling to be bound by this legal relationship. Moreover, multiple reality obstacles also lie in front of young people, who may be so busy that they don't even have time to make friends or fall in love, or anxious about being laid off and having their salaries reduced, making it impossible for them to move towards marriage.

Spiritual alignment is a highly demanding requirement, often relying on subtle fate; But society can do its best to remove the external barriers that make young people afraid to get married. This is more difficult than simply renovating and setting up a certification center, but it is more likely to win people's hearts.

To enable young people to enter into marriage, the first step is to provide them with a life outside of work, which requires relevant departments to further rigidly implement workers' rights and break the infinite competition in the workplace. A worker who works 12 hours a day and faces hidden risks of overtime and unemployment at any time, has neither time for love nor energy to establish long-term intimate relationships, how can they talk about marriage?

Make young people willing to get married and eliminate their worries about their married life. For example, the huge costs of childbirth, upbringing, education, etc. can be separated from the accounts of private households and systematically covered by the state and public finance. This includes the large-scale construction of inclusive childcare institutions, breaking the interest binding between educational resources and school district housing, and implementing substantial measures such as large individual income tax deductions and direct cash subsidies.

Some young people carefully weigh the return rate and cost-effectiveness of marriage, and even calculate the hidden "marriage tax": for example, according to the current tax refund standards, after two people get married, in terms of special additional deductions such as housing loan interest, both husband and wife can choose to have one party deduct 100% or each party deduct 50%. In fact, this is less than the total deduction amount of personal income tax when two people are unmarried. Next is the vacation system. A netizen posted that one of the reasons for not obtaining a license for many years is that unmarried individuals have 20 days of home leave per year, while married employees only have 20 days every four years.

These may seem trivial, but for young people who already lack motivation to get married, they will deepen their hesitation. This is a practical problem that needs to be solved by the current civil affairs, taxation and other systems working together.

There is also a cooling off period for divorce that can be discussed. Obtaining a license can lead to a sudden departure, while divorce requires a cooling off period. This "lenient entry and strict exit" mechanism can also "discourage" young people to a certain extent.

You can get a license anywhere, but young people don't get married because it's not convenient. Only when life itself is stable and full of hope, that thin marriage certificate will add icing on the cake to happiness.

(Author Chen Yueqin)