What Young Shanghainese Imagine Marriage Will Cost Them

Shifting expectations

A growing number of young people in Shanghai no longer treat marriage as a compulsory life milestone but as an elective choice. Multiple quantitative studies back this shift — including a report jointly released by the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (中国科学院心理研究所) and the Social Sciences Academic Press (社会科学文献出版社), and a 2025 study from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (上海社会科学院). The change began around 2010 and, according to recent qualitative work, attitudes are becoming more rational and pragmatic. Why the rethink? Economic pressure, personal histories, and changing gender norms all play a role — and Beijing’s long-running worries about low fertility and an aging population mean the trend has clear policy implications.

Four orientations in a high‑pressure city

To map how singles are navigating choices, researchers interviewed 34 yet‑to‑marry adults aged 25–45 in Shanghai. They identified four recurring orientations: the Resistant, the Indifferent, the Torn, and the Traditional. The Resistant are the most decisive: they reject marriage as unnecessary and risky, often citing unhappy childhood homes or family breakups. It has been reported that stories of gender‑based violence circulate widely on Chinese social media, which some interviewees said reinforced their reluctance. Sky‑high Shanghai housing prices also loom large — one male interviewee said buying a home for marriage would feel like putting his life savings at risk if a divorce followed.

Work, freedom and policy headaches

The Indifferent — described by respondents with the Chinese phrase wu suowei — are career‑first, marriage‑optional. Many in this group value the control and time that single life allows and are skeptical of unequal domestic burdens that often fall on women. It has been reported that long‑term cohabitation remains uncommon in China, so the choice for many is still between marriage or solo living. For Western readers: this is playing out in China’s global economic hub, where housing, hukou constraints, and state efforts to boost births intersect. The result is more than a personal preference; it is a demographic shift that complicates policymakers’ attempts to reverse falling marriage and birth rates.