Check registration statistics before listening to elders: what do “marriage rate” and “divorce rate” actually mean?

Cost: None. It takes just a few minutes to read the section on marriage registration in the annual report from the Civil Affairs Bureau.
In plain terms: In 2024, 6.106 million couples got married nationwide, a 20.5% drop from the previous year. Meanwhile, 3.513 million divorces were finalized. The oft‑quoted claim that “more than half of marriages end in divorce” comes from dividing these two numbers, yielding roughly 57.5%. The exact figures are 351.3 divorces and 610.6 marriages for that year. However, the two groups of people are not the same, so this figure cannot be interpreted as “half of all marriages end in divorce.” The report also lists a marriage rate of 4.3‰ and a divorce rate of 2.5‰; both use the total population as the denominator, not just married individuals.
Benefit: In 2024, 6.106 million marriages were legally registered, representing a 20.5% decrease from 2023; the corresponding marriage rate was 4.3‰. That same year, 3.513 million divorces were processed: 2.622 million through civil registration and 0.891 million via court rulings or mediation, giving a divorce rate of 2.5‰. The report defines the marriage (or divorce) rate as the number of marriages (or divorces) in a given year divided by the average annual population, multiplied by 1000‰. This is a “crude rate” that uses the whole population as its base.
Evidence grade: A
Sources:民政部 (2025). 2024 年民政事业发展统计公报（五（二）1 婚姻登记服务、注释 5），网页版与 PDF 版. https://www.mca.gov.cn/n1288/n1294/n1554/c1662004999980006190/content.html、https://www.mca.gov.cn/gdnps/n2445/n2451/n2458/n2681/c1662004999980006189/attr/400985.pdf
Notes: The common online figure of “over 50% divorce rate” is obtained by dividing the number of divorces by the number of marriages for the same year (351.3 ÷ 610.6 ≈ 57.5%). This ratio is known as the “divorce‑to‑marriage ratio.” Because the two sets of individuals are not identical and the report does not list such a metric, it cannot be taken as “half of all marriages end in divorce.” To calculate the actual probability that a given marriage eventually ends in divorce, one would need longitudinal data tracking the same cohort of newlyweds — data not available in this report.