See What Couples get as Cash reward to marry early in China (This will shock you)!

 

Local Chinese officials trying to encourage earlier marriages are offering an incentive that all newlywed couples can appreciate: cash.

Couples who marry while the bride is 25 years old or younger will get a reward of 1,000 yuan ($137), officials in Changshan county, in the eastern province of Zhejiang, said last week on the county’s official account on the social media platform WeChat.

The reward, which is restricted to couples marrying for the first time, is meant to promote “age-appropriate marriage and childbearing,” the notice said. The county also announced a number of subsidies to help parents with child care, education and fertility.

Officials at multiple levels of government have been experimenting with various measures to increase the birthrate in the face of a looming demographic crisis in China, where the population declined last year for the first time in six decades.

They include abolishing the “one-child policy” that reigned from the late 1970s until 2016, which was designed to limit the number of births to prevent China’s population from growing too quickly. Since 2021, couples have been allowed to have as many as three children.