NPR

China's Marriage Rate Plummets As Women Choose To Stay Single Longer

"Before, in China, you married to survive," says a Shanghai magazine editor. "Now I'm living well by myself, so I have higher expectations in marriage."
Yuan Ruiyu, 26, says he and his friends are under pressure from both the government and their parents to hurry up and marry, and it's having the opposite effect on them.

At a downtown market in Shanghai, people are hustling to sell their goods. But at this market shaded by trees lining the pathways of People's Park, their goods are their grown children.

"Born in 1985, studied in the U.K., she's short, has a Shanghai residence permit, owns her own apartment," says Mrs. Wang, reading aloud the sign she's taped to an umbrella advertising her unmarried daughter. It's one of hundreds of umbrellas lined up along the park's walkways with similar

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