They say good things come to those who wait. Let’s hope that’s true in the case of Hong Kong marriages.
A new report released yesterday by Hong Kong’s Census and Statistics department shows that the median age for tying the knot has crept up significantly in the past two decades.
Marriage and Divorce Trends in Hong Kong, 1991 to 2016 also reveals that more Hong Kong women are marrying mainland men, and that the city’s divorce rate has *gulp* nearly doubled in that time frame.
The new reports shows the amount of men who have never gotten hitched climbing — from 25.8 percent in 1991 to 32.4 percent in 2016 — while the median age for guys to say “I do” is doing the same, jumping from 29 to 31 in the same period.
For women, meanwhile, some 18.3 percent had never been married in 1991. That figure rose to 28 percent in 2016, as did the median age for brides — from 26 to 29 years old.
The trends, wrote researchers, reflected “the tendency towards marriage postponement or non-marriage in both genders.”
As such, the amount of married men in the city also decreased from 69 percent in 1991 to 61.7 in 2016. The decline was larger for women — the amount of married women fell from 65.2 percent in 1991 to 55.3 percent 25 years later.
Meanwhile, the number of divorce decrees granted in 2016 was about triple that in 1991, rising from 6,295 to 17,196. Even when population growth was taken into account, 2016’s divorce rate of 2.34 per 1000 people was still double that of 1991.
But while some split, others cross the divide. We’re talking, of course, of couplings between Hongkongers and mainlanders.
And while the number of cross-boundary unions overall have risen and fallen over the past two and a half decades — with 22,610 registered in 1991; 34,628 in 2006; and 22,926 in 2016 — two shifts on that front have taken place.
Firstly, the amount of cross-border unions registered in Hong Kong, rather than on the mainland, has increased significantly, comprising 34 percent of the 50,008 marriages recorded in the city 2016.
Secondly, the number of Hong Kong women marrying mainland men has steadily increased in recent years, the report shows, with brides from the city accounting for 33 percent of cross-boundary marriages in 2016, compared to just 6 percent in 1991.
Ruminating on the factors behind cross-boundary marriages, those romantic statisticians at the department suggested that “many” may have occurred as a result of “routine social contact, such as work and study.”
Poetic.
