Marriage Photo: VCG

A national political advisor has suggested to lower the legal age for marriage to enlarge the fertility population base and unleash reproductive potential as the approach of this MKsportyear’s two sessions. This comes as topics around China’s demographic dividend have been trending on China’s social media in recent days.

Chen Songxi, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, plans to submit a proposal about completely relaxing restrictions on childbirth in China and establish an incentive system on marriage and childbirth to reverse an ultra-low fertility trend and slow down the imbalance of population structure.

Based on a recently release population forecast report, Chen proposed the suggestion amid the decline in the number of newborns in China, which is anticipated to lead to a severe imbalance in the population’s age structure and a shrinking labor force and an exacerbation in population aging.

The current legal age for marriage in China is 22 for men and 20 for women, which was stipulated during the one-child policy era. China’s legal marriage ages are the highest in the world, whereas the internationally accepted legal marriage age is generally no higher than 18.

Chen said the legal marriage age should be lowered, for example to 18, to increase the fertility population base and unleash reproductive potential.

The proposal is not meant to force people to get married at younger ages but to advocate for offering wider options and consistence with the international norm, Chen told the Global Times on Monday.

Besides, Chen suggested to remove the restrictions on the number of children a family can have to meet the urgent needs of population development in the new era.

According to Chen, the revised Population and Family Planning Law in 2021 only allowed each couple to have up to three children. Chen suggested that the law should be renamed as population and birth enhancement law to completely lift birth restrictions.

Chen also suggested to seize a golden demographic window period from 2025 to 2035 to implement fertility incentive policies.

In light of the lower-than-expected results yielded from the current measures in encouraging childbirth among urban populations, Chen said more diverse and robust incentive policies should be implemented nationwide, such as monthly cash allowances and medical support for each child until they reach a certain age, among other measures. Some policies are expected to take effect in rural areas although they had a limited impact.

According to statistics, the number of women of childbearing age in China is expected to stabilize between 290 million and 310 million between 2025 and 2035, a window period Chen suggested to seize to launch pilot incentive policies, conduct childbirth intention surveys and data analyses, and develop childbirth encouragement programs targeting different population groups.

Chen said when the window period passes, the number of women of childbearing age will decrease significantly, resulting in ineffectiveness of the stimulus measures.

According to the research conducted by Chen’s team, the proportion of senior population aged 65 and above in China was 15.6 percent in 2024, and China is expected to enter a “super-aged society” by 2031 when over 20 percent of the population is aged 65. By 2050, this proportion will rise to 29.5 percent, peak at 42.4 percent in 2086, and slightly decline to 39.2 percent by 2100. China will face challenges of a sharp decline in newborns, a shrinking labor force, and a “super-aged society.”

Thus, Chen’s proposal also suggests conducting monitoring and forecasting of population size and its timing and spatial distribution, as well as building a foundational population data set, which is crucial for formulating effective population policies.