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author: li jingkui

economist

science author

recently, the topic of "difficulties in finding love and marriage for older rural youth" has once again become a hot topic. many local government agencies have responded to and provided solutions to the "difficulties in finding love and marriage" issue raised by the public.

for example, the civil affairs bureau of fuyuan county, qujing city, yunnan province, mentioned in its reply that it would "promote marriage customs reform" and "enhance individual competitiveness"; tonggu county would create "collective weddings, blind dates and other projects that young people like"; putian, fujian province would advocate the "zero dowry" and "low dowry" trends to reduce the pressure on young people of marriageable age to get married.

in fact, these measures are not uncommon, and from a national perspective, different regions often introduce similar policies. for example, baoji, shaanxi, issued a document titled "xiangjiazhuang village's measures to incentivize matchmakers who introduce spouses to young men in the village."it directly stipulates that "the village committee will give 1,000 yuan as an introduction fee to any matchmaker who introduces a spouse to an unmarried young man in our village and eventually gets married."

this is not the only village that has introduced measures to encourage matchmakers.

but if we analyze it carefully, these measures are mostly aimed at revitalizing the "existing population", but they are difficult to solve the problem of gender imbalance.according to the analysis of fuyuan county civil affairs bureau, the imbalance in the population gender ratio is the fundamental reason why rural youth have difficulty finding love and marriage.

according to statistics from relevant departments, between 1980 and 2010, there were approximately 36 million more males than females at birth in my country, which means that 10%-15% of men born after 1980 will have difficulty finding marriage.

so, can the government-guided matchmaking activities and incentives for matchmakers play a role? this can be scored in both the long and short term.

in the first case, there is no incentive for matchmakers throughout the country, and only these villages encourage matchmakers to arrange marriages for unmarried young men in the village. then, according to an important principle of economics, that is, people will respond to incentives, it can be imagined that there will be more matchmakers, and even better matchmakers, to arrange marriages for young men in these villages.

although the matchmaker cannot change the other conditions of these unmarried young men, it is possible that the matchmaker's efforts will help them find suitable young women. at least, this incentive method may have some effect in the short term.

however, if other villages see that the incentive measures of xiangjiazhuang village have worked and helped solve or alleviate the difficulty of unmarried young men in the village to get married, and follow suit and get involved in incentivizing matchmakers, then in the end it seems that only the matchmakers will benefit.

it is conceivable that being a matchmaker in rural areas will soon become a promising profession. however, there will be competition among matchmakers, and in the end, although there are more matchmakers, the income of each matchmaker may still be the same as before, because matchmakers are also rolling up.

let's look at the second situation, which is also the situation in our country's actual marriage market. that is, if the number of marriageable men is far greater than that of marriageable women, can matchmakers still play a role?it is probably difficult. at least judging from the national situation, it is difficult for matchmakers to solve the problem fundamentally.

in fact, this problem is not a problem of a particular village, it is a problem of the times.

according to the research of professor mu guangzong of the institute of population research of peking university, as of the seventh national census in 2020, the total number of bachelors in mainland china was about 35 million (different from the 36 million mentioned above, but not large), of which 70% were reserve bachelors, and only about 30%, or about 10 million, had entered the marriageable age.

professor mu further estimated that "the superposition effect of the bachelor cohort must be considered (+). from 2010 to 2019, the marriage squeeze began to emerge, with about 1.3 million bachelors of demographic significance; from 2020 to 2029, due to the superposition effect of excess males from the 80s and 90s generations, about 11.4 million men will be squeezed out of the marriage market; from 2030 to 2039, the excess males from the 00s will be added, squeezing out about 24.4 million bachelors; from 2040 to 2050, the excess males from the 10s will be added, and the bachelor group will further expand to 36.3 million."

in other words, as life progresses, the accumulated force of the imbalance in the sex ratio at birth will release a group of about 35 million bachelors by 2050.

under the heavy pressure of this era, what can you ask the village cadres to do? if they don't issue some policies, it means they are doing nothing; if they issue policies, what kind of policies can they issue to fundamentally solve the problem? after thinking about it, the only thing they can do is to encourage the matchmaker.

to be honest, from the perspective of time and region, this problem is really an unsolvable one. since so many bachelors have been created in the past few decades, there are only two directions to solve the problem: one is to seek a solution outside the region; the other is to seek a solution in the future.

let's talk about seeking solutions outside the region first. first of all, it is difficult to seek solutions within china, because bachelors are no longer divided into north and south. so we can only seek solutions outside, and can only seek solutions from other countries that are less wealthy economically.

but the problem is that women of marriageable age in other countries are also not rich, because the birth ratio of women and men is basically the same.if my country imports women from other countries on a large scale, such as marrying women from vietnam and other southeast asian countries, it will cause a shortage of women of marriageable age in those countries. moreover, if you have a demand of tens of millions at once, you will almost marry all the women in that country. if that is the case, the village leaders will not agree to our doing so. therefore, it is difficult to seek a balanced marriage market across regions.

let's look to the future for a solution. in other words, generally let the girls who are a few years younger marry the unmarried young men in front, and then gradually recursively alleviate the problem until the marriage market finally returns to equilibrium. this idea is good, but the problem is that marriage is not a joke, and no one will let their daughter help you solve the problem of older single men in your village. moreover, you have to ask the boys of the younger generation, and they may not agree. therefore, the path of seeking a balanced marriage market across generations is not feasible.

therefore, no matter which population expert comes out and talks about this issue, no matter how eloquently he speaks, it will be useless because it is logically unsolvable.

a few years ago, an economics professor named xie zuoshi wrote half-jokingly in his blog that it was possible to marry a wife together. to be honest, i also read this blog, and the whole logic is the same, that is, the problem of so many bachelors is unsolvable. after that, professor xie really had no idea what to do, so he remembered a story that had appeared in some areas of his hometown sichuan, where brothers married a wife together, and then wrote about it.

it was just this article that made professor xie a national celebrity. but even if they cursed him, it would be impossible for those indignant writers on the internet to come up with a solution.

does the imbalance in the gender ratio bring only bad things?not necessarily. in 2011, professor wei shangjin of columbia university and professor zhang xiaobo of peking university published a paper in the internationally renowned economics journal political economy, in which they found that gender imbalance effectively promoted competitive savings.

competitive savings refers to the accumulation of wealth to gain an advantage in competition in order to satisfy one's strong biological and physiological desires.when competition increases, people are willing to adjust their savings rates significantly. the higher a person's savings relative to people of the same age and gender, the better their competitive position. the two professors pointed out, "from an evolutionary perspective, we have good reasons to believe that competitive savings are quantitatively important and cannot be ignored in the coming decades."

although this research may be valid, for individuals like us living in this era, especially unmarried young men like those in xiangjiazhuang village, it is too grandiose to say that the life difficulties they face have promoted the country's competitive savings and injected competitive vitality into the country's future.

because what they are fighting for are merely the basic rights that have been universally enjoyed by their ancestors.

this article is an original article specially commissioned by the phoenix news commentary department and only represents the author's views.

editor: liu jun