Marriage and Childbearing in China Since 1940

Increased age at marriage in China has contributed significantly to the large decline in fertility that has occurred. If every married couple had attained its actual completed family size, and age at marriage had not changed, there would have been 104 million more births since 1950. Cohorts marrying in the 1950s and 1960s followed surprisingly closely the structure of a mathematical model of first marriage rates by age derived from the pattern of first marriage frequencies in Sweden in the nineteenth century. The fit to the model schedule was destroyed in the 1970s by administratively enforced postponement of marriage.