IN FOCUS - East Asian Institute - National University of Singapore

IN FOCUS
Marriage Revolution in East and Southeast Asia: Why do People Stay
Single in Singapore and China
Friday, 6 January 2012 Among the young generation of Chinese Singaporeans, marriage is
not considered a necessity and should only be committed into voluntarily, and not urged
into by family or society. Whereas singles in China face more social and familial pressures to
get married and are also likely to regard marriage as essential in their lives.
Dr Zhang Yanxia, visiting research fellow of East Asian Institute at the National University of
Singapore, gave an engaging narrative of her preliminary findings from a recent qualitative
study conducted in Singapore and two major cities in China, Shanghai and Beijing, with 100
never-married ethnic Chinese. Dr Zhang conducted the study as an attempt to explain the
rising trend towards late marriage and singlehood in East and Southeast Asia over the past
three decades.
Dr Zhang presented a historical review of singlehood trend in China. The first wave of
singleton occurred in the 1950s with the enactment of the first marriage law that abolished
arranged and forced marriages, resulting in the rash of divorces. The second tide was
between the 1950s and 1970s, when a mass of young intellectuals were sent to the
countryside for education through manual labour, but later divorced their rural wives in
order to return to their urban homes. Love marriage has since become widely acceptable in
the early 1980s. Hence, the third singleton tide arose in the 1990s as people chose to be
singles in order to experience the freedom of love. The fourth wave of singleton was
attributed to women’s higher education and greater financial independence.
Dr Zhang’s study has shown that Singapore has higher proportion of singles in the 30 to 40
years old age group than in China. Also, Singapore has one of the highest singlehood rates
among Asian countries.
For Singaporeans who do get married, marriage ages have risen, whether male or female,
by at least three to four years compared to 30 years ago. In 1970, the mean age of
marriage for Singaporean women was 24.2, and increased markedly to 28.7 in 2010. For
men, the average age was 27.8 in 1970, which increased to 30.9 in 2010.
In China, singlehood rate has remained fairly constant. However, in economically developed
major cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, a sharp increase in the number of singles and
“shengnu”, which literally means “leftover” females, is observed.
One of the attributing reasons is the expansion of education and employment opportunities
for women. With higher level of education, women are more aware of their rights, individual
choice and gender equality in the society, thus empowering them greater freedom,
aspiration and economic independence.
Increasing uncertainty in labour market, long working hours, high living expenditure, high
work and lifestyle stress, increasing divorce rate, individualism, etc., are other attributing
reasons to the singlehood phenomenon in Singapore, Beijing and Shanghai.
The diminished desire for childbearing in women is also a main reason why women put off
marriage and motherhood, which are opportunity cost to their career development.

Dr Zhang’s survey on the attitude towards marriage has shown that most Singaporeans
regard marriage as a personal desire instead of a social and familial duty, whereas majority
of respondents in China regard marriage both as a personal desire as well as social and
familial duty. This therefore explains why singles in China, especially women in their late
20s, face persistent social pressure to marry. Singaporean singles will not lower their
expectation of an ideal partner for the sake of getting married and they believe marriage
should be entered into voluntarily. The economics of marriage, increasing cost of marriage
ceremony, housing and childrearing are major deterrents to Singaporeans from jumping
into marriage.
Pertaining attitude towards relationship, there is a wide acceptance of premarital sex and
cohabitation in both Singaporean and Chinese respondents. Cohabitation is more prevalent
in major cities of China than in Singapore. The majority of respondents in both countries
agree that marriage is compulsory in order to have children, but a high proportion of
Singaporean respondents feel that having children is not critical and certainly not a
determining factor in marriage.
Despite rising materialism in China, traditional gender norms, which have powerful influence
in mate selection, are deeply rooted and still perpetuate the society. Surprisingly, traditional
gender expectation remains quite strong in Singapore as well.
In Singapore and China, education and economic hypergamy is a long-held practice, in
which women marry up, to men of equal or higher income, education, social status and age,
and men marry down. This means that there is a marriage squeeze for the less-educated
males and higher-educated women, and that the most highly educated women often end up
on the shelf without partners. Age is also an issue in China, where men prefer younger
women. In Singapore, age is less of an issue as mean age gap between men and women is
about five years.
The lack of effective matchmaking agencies may be one reason why the alleviation of
singlehood problem in Singapore remains a great challenge. The Social Development
Network (SDN) is the sole matchmaking institution run by the Singapore’s government, in
partnership with private matchmaking agencies providing services support.
However, Singaporeans have yet to warm up to the idea of being introduced or arranged
due to social stigma. The rising cost of engaging dating agencies is also another factor why
matchmaking is unpopular.
On the other hand, dating and matchmaking are vibrant with huge market potential in China.
Online dating sites and private agencies organise myriads of luxury dating activities and
services at a premium to Chinese singles. These private marriage agencies in China,
however, are not without complaints from the public due to a lack of regulation and
supervision from the government.
Dr Zhang concluded that that there is no sharp distinction between Singapore and China as
to what extent non-marriage is voluntary or involuntary. The choice to remain single varies
in life stages of individuals and the survey indicates 30 years old as the “magic age” for that
turning point. As widely acknowledged, more singles are in fact feeling happier with their
singlehood status.