Houston Community News >> Urban Chinese Waiting to Marry

1/4/2008 BEIJING (UPI)-- Chinese in big cities are waiting longer to get married, with the average age for first-time brides and grooms rising two years in the past decade in Beijing.

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences reported that the oldest newlyweds in the country appear to be in Shanghai. In 2006, men averaged 31.1 years when they married for the first time, while the average age of women at their weddings was 28.4, Xinhua, the official government news agency, reported.

In Beijing, men marry at the average age of 28.2 and women at 26.1. For both genders, the average age of first marriage has risen two years in the past 10 years.

The figures continue a long trend.

At the beginning of the 20th century, men married on average at 19.17. That had risen to 25.87 by the end of the century, while women married on average at 18.28 in 1900 and 24.17 in 2000.

The academy found that while Beijing residents do not marry in haste they repent quickly. Almost 25,000 couples got divorced in 2006, one-third of them after three years or less of marriage and 52 couples after less than a month. 

(Contriubted by UPI)