promising area for future research, and our projection model highlights the harsh inequalities in educational attainment between Han and minority regions.

Simulating changes in a population as large and complex as China’s is a challenging task that has not been attempted by many other authors. Zeng et al. (2008) have constructed a detailed probabilistic model of population growth in China with extremely promising results. We have adopted some of Zeng et al.’s assumptions about future changes in fertility. Our projection model requires a more limited number of data inputs and restricting assumptions, making it potentially more robust to unanticipated social changes. Although approached in very different ways, both modeling strategies agree on some of the urgent issues in China’s demographic future.

# **4.2 National Results**

In Table 7 we present the baseline results of our cohort-component projection of share married by education in the 21st century. Because we employ data from 100% summary tabulations of the China 2000 Census, statistics at the national level can be calculated for open-ended and closed age groups (30+ and 30-39 respectively). In comparing these numbers, two issues need to be highlighted.

First, results differ sharply between those for the closed age group of men 30-39 and those for the open-ended age group 30+. China has low levels of adult mortality and very low fertility, meaning that the open-ended age group includes a significant proportion of older men who did not face a shortage of brides. Sex ratios at birth began to rise sharply from the mid1980s, so men born after 1990 are the first projected to face a significant squeeze on the marriage market. Thus, 78 percent of those aged 30+ in 2030 and 42 percent of those aged 30+ in 2050 are old enough to have faced little marriage squeeze.<sup>20</sup> As a result, while one-fifth of men aged 3039 are estimated to remain single in 2030, only 7 percent of those in the open-ended age group 30+ are estimated to be unmarried. The estimates for the age-group 30-39 is arguably more important, since people’s perception of how bride shortage will affect their lives is likely to be shaped more by the experience of their own age peers than by that of much older cohorts of men whose circumstances are very different.

Second, we find that the bride shortage is only somewhat mitigated even if the sex ratio at birth had dropped sharply to 1.09 immediately after the most recent births observed in the 2005 census. Once again, this is due to the momentum of births from earlier cohorts reaching marriage age. Problems in the marriage market would persist well into the future as the men and women already born reach maturity and pass through the marriage market. As a result, aggregate spousal availability will hit an all-time low before recovering, regardless of the fertility and sex ratio scenarios considered. By 2030, an estimated 20.8 percent of men aged 30-39 will never have married, even if the sex ratio at birth had fallen to a normal level of 1.06 in 2006.<sup>21</sup> The

> 20 Percent of males too old to have faced a marriage squeeze come from projections of the population age distribution in China from the UN Population Division (2008).

> 21 The timing of the peak of cohort share of males never married is highly sensitive to the age at which males and females begin their search for a marriage partner. Models with late entry to the marriage market exhibit later peaking behavior, but the cross-cohort average share never married in the closed-interval age group is highly consistent.

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