The Dual Costs of Marriage and Expectation Mismatch: A Mechanism for Understanding Gender Conflict in Contemporary China

Against the backdrop of a sustained decline in marriage and birth rates in China and intensifying gender tensions, traditional explanations centered on individual preferences or gender norms are insufficient to account for the structural mechanisms involved. Drawing on the economics of marriage and the family, this paper examines how rising costs of housing, weddings, bride price, childbearing, and education affect men's decisions to enter marriage, as well as how the expansion of higher education, the shortage of standardized professional employment, and the motherhood penalty shape women's opportunity costs associated with marriage. Building on these factors, together with declining expectations of economic growth, changing lifestyle expectations, and the rising utility of singlehood as an alternative, the paper proposes the “Dual Marriage Costs–Expectation Mismatch Integrated Model” (the Di Formula) and uses “marital surplus” to characterize the comprehensive net benefits of marriage relative to singlehood. The paper argues that contemporary gender relations in China involve more than a conflict of values, but separately rising direct marriage costs for men and opportunity costs for women, together with a widening structural mismatch between modernity-based expectations and real resource constraints. When marital surplus declines and eventually becomes negative, individually rational decisions to postpone or forgo marriage may, in aggregate, contribute to declining marriage and birth rates and intensified gender tensions. Marriage is therefore increasingly shifting from a traditional mechanism of family cooperation toward a high-cost, high-risk, long-term economic decision.