Falling marriage rate reflects changing times

Editor's Note: Over the past six years, the marriage rate, the ratio of registered marriages to the total population in a year, has been dropping. For example, only 72 couples out of every 10,000 people in China got married last year, the lowest marriage rate since 2013. Simultaneously, the divorce rate has been rising steadily since 2002, reaching 0.315 percent in 2017. What are the factors behind the falling marriage rate and the rising divorce rate, and what should we do about it? Two experts share their views on the issue with China Daily's Liu Jianna. Excerpts follow:

Rising cost leads to low marriage rate

Li Jianmin, a professor of demography at the Institute of Population and Development, Nankai University