Western provinces are small net importers of women, and yet they are projected to have high proportions of unmarried men. This is due to the second route for providing a “demographic subsidy” ― there is a net inflow to the Western provinces of lower-educated Han men from central and coastal China, helped by (sometimes informal) policies to promote migration to less developed minority areas (Bhattacharji 2009). Of males who had ever moved from one province to another by the time of the China 2000 Census, Xinjiang was the fourth most popular destination, but the in-migrants had less education than the average male resident in 2000 (Table 9). And Tibet was the eighth most popular destination, and in-migrants there also have very low levels of education, though higher than the average resident. In comparison, over 30% of male migrants to Beijing and Tianjin (the first and sixth choices) -- and over 20% to Shanghai and Guangdong (the second and third choices) -- had completed senior middle education or higher.<sup>23</sup> Our simulations indicate a high concentration of unmarried men in poor areas, and areas with high proportions of ethnic minorities. The majority of prefectures with the highest predicted percentages of never-married males aged 30+ in 2030 are located in Guizhou, Qinghai, Tibet, and Yunnan. High fractions of unmarried males are also predicted for Ningxia, Sichuan and Xinjiang. The predicted percentages of unmarried men are lowest in China’s richest provinces. Several of the provinces with high predicted numbers of unmarried men contain large minority populations and large numbers of rural males with few years of formal education. Some prefectures will be especially hard hit. For example, two out of nine prefectures in Guizhou are projected to exceed 20% non-marriage among males 30-39 by 2030, and all but one may exceed 50% by 2050.<sup>24</sup> This geographic concentration of unmarried men raises the potential for social instability, as entire cohorts of men perceive that they and their peers face a high likelihood of enforced bachelorhood. This is unlike other areas that have historically had high levels of non-marriage such as Ireland ─ where there was no shortage of women and men could have a sweetheart whom they aspired to marry once they had saved enough ─ or small rich countries such as South Korea which can attract enough foreign-born brides to significantly offset the shortage of local brides, as discussed below.

Another source of concern is the aging into retirement of China’s working class. Provinces with high dependency ratios will have to strain even more to support their elderly while being confronted with large numbers of unmarried men. The implications of this will be discussed in the next section.

# **5   Conclusions and Policy Implications**

The proportion of never-married men aged 30-39 is projected to grow rapidly as the birth cohorts of the One Child Policy begin to saturate the marriage markets. A high sex ratio means that

> 23 Authors calculations from the China 2000 Census 0.1% sample.

> 24 Percent unmarried for sub-national areas calculated by applying the rate for age 30-39 to the population by prefecture by educational level, which is only available for age 6 and higher. Thus, the population will be more heavily weighted towards primary and junior middle level education, and the resulting overall share never married biased upwards.

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