As a result, not only was Chinese marital fertility in the past lower than Western marital fertility, the average number of female children surviving to adulthood was particularly low compared to female survivorship in the West. Excess female infant and child mortality therefore produced the second distinctive feature in nuptiality, an unbalanced marriage market in terms of sex. Females married universally and early. Males married later, if at all. Lee and Wang point out that in this respect, the Malthusian model of universal Chinese marriage is not empirically borne out.
Male bachelorhood seems to be a universal Chinese phenomenon regardless of time and place.
Whereas male marriage in China has always been restricted, female marriage has always been universal. This is in stark contrast to Western Europe, where female, like male, marriage occurred late if at all. The third and perhaps most striking distinction in China's population history is the pattern of its fertility rates. Because of the low level of fertility within marriage, persistently high nuptiality did not inflate Chinese fertility. Contrary to the perception of Malthus and his contemporaries that Chinese fertility was relatively high, overall fertility was probably not much higher than European fertility, while marital fertility was significantly lower.