Marriage in China Since 1950

Abstract

The 1/1,000-sample survey conducted in 1982 by the Ministry of Family Planning collected retrospective data on marriages as well as on births. The report of the survey includes tables listing rates of first marriage by single years of age (the number of first marriages in a single-year age interval relative to the number of women in the interval) for each calendar year from 1949 to 1981. It also provides the calculated mean age at first marriage and the total first marriage rate for each year from 1940 to 1982 (Zhao and Yu 1983). The total first-marriage rate for a given year is the sum of the single-year age-specific rates of first marriage. It equals the proportion that would ever marry in a hypothetical cohort subject to the marriage rates of the year in question.