China announces cash prizes for people willing to marry

BEJIENG: China has introduced wide-ranging financial incentives to boost marriages and childbirth amid an unprecedented population decline. Provinces and cities are offering wedding subsidies, housing grants, and hefty child-rearing payments in a dramatic policy shift.

Wedding vouchers of up to 1,000 yuan (£100) are on offer in Zhejiang province, one of the latest to do so. Ningbo and Hangzhou will give the subsidies on a first-come, first-served basis.

Some have gone even further and earned the label “baby cities.” But Tianmen in Hubei province leads the push. The city recorded a 17% rise in births this year.

In fact, families with three children now get up to 220,000 yuan (£23,000) in subsidies and housing benefits, one of the highest support packages in China.

A demographic crisis in China is widely linked to its former one-child policy, enforced for 35 years. The policy caused a fast-aging population, a shrinking workforce, and a gender imbalance of about 40 million more men than women. In 2015, China ended the policy. The birth rate has continued to fall.

Young women remain reluctant to have children. Surveys show that almost 40% of female university students do not want children.

Cited reasons include high costs, workplace pressure, economic uncertainty, and the burden of caring for aging parents.

Beijing introduced a national child benefit this year, of 3,600 yuan (£380) a year for every child under three. But boosting births is mainly left to local governments, which have introduced uneven and sometimes intrusive measures

Many women reported receiving unwanted calls from officials across several provinces, asking questions about menstrual cycles and pregnancy plans.

Some regions have shifted their focus to marriage incentives. Tianmen provides 120,000 yuan in housing subsidy, more generous maternity benefits, and a marriage bonus of 60,000 yuan for couples who register locally.

China has also eliminated requirements that pressured couples to marry only in their hometowns where they are registered. Despite these steps, marriage rates keep falling. China recorded 6.1 million marriages in 2024, down from 7.7 million the previous year and more than 13 million a decade ago.

President Xi Jinping certainly is going to pay close attention to the growing price tag of such programs. It is not obvious whether financial incentives can actually turn China’s birth trend around or change social attitudes that have been deeply set among younger generations.