Recently, some lawmakers have proposed that given China's aging population, the current legal age for marriage should be lowered from 22 for men and 20 for women to 18 for both.

The proposal has triggered a heated discussion. In a survey by The Beijing News newspaper, 60 percent of respondents opposed it, with only 20 percent expressing their support. Another survey by the People's Daily had a whopping 82.8 percent of the participants opposing it.

Most people believe that lowering the age will not necessarily encourage more people to get married earlier. The dipping marriage and birth rates are due to various factors. For example, in big cities especially, people don't marry early usually due to all kinds of pressures at work and in their daily life, not because of the current legal age.

Besides, to lower the legal age will encourage puppy love, which will distract young people from their schoolwork and also create a lot of social problems.

But there are also those who believe that lowering the legal age will help those who go through a kind of wedding ceremony while they are underage, especially in the rural areas. This group believes that 18 is old enough for people to decide whether they want to marry or not.

A global issue

Liu Tianfang (pinglun.eastday.com): The suggestion to lower the legal marriage age was meant to boost the marriage rate, and even the birth rate, and also help those who get "married" when they are underage. The marriage rate in China has been falling in the past five years while the divorce rate began to rise in 2013. The combination of a low marriage rate and a high divorce rate obviously impacts the birth rate.

However, The Beijing News survey shows that most people don't support a lower marriage age, citing mental immaturity, lack of life experience, a higher divorce rate driven to marry on an impulse, poor economic capability, a low sense of responsibility, etc. Most importantly, 18 is the time when people are still receiving their education, so a lower legal marriage age will lead to a conflict between education and marriage.

Therefore, although a lower marriage age can help to ratchet up the birth rate to some extent, it can also trigger a series of social problems. Around the world, there is no successful example of pushing up the birth rate by lowering the marriage age, which means a higher birth rate is not necessarily the result of a lower legal marriage age.

The fact that 60 percent of those who participated in the survey opposed a lower legal marriage age must be heeded. Lowering it is something related to the entire society. If it is not supported by the majority, it's better not to rush to adopt it.

There are many reasons for people marrying late, such as economic growth, education and urbanization. It is a global problem and will not be solved by lowering the marriage age.

Guo Yuanpeng (guancha.gmw.cn): Many countries have lower marriage ages than China: in Denmark, 21 for men and 18 for women; 20 and 18 in Switzerland; and 18 and 16 in Japan.

China's demographic dividends have been used up and the family planning policy has now shifted from one that limited population growth to one that encourages births.

Some people argue that to lower the legal marriage age is to encourage infatuation but this is a biased argument. Better living conditions mean that children are maturing faster than before. It is not encouraging puppy love but offering more choices to the young, who have already physically matured.

We have to face the reality that sex and abortion among young people are becoming more frequent. This could be related to the prevailing legal marriage age.

Another more important reality is that in China's vast rural areas, most people get "married" before the current legal age and then go to the local civil affairs bureaus for their marriage certificate only after they reach the legal age.

A simplistic idea

Yuan Yuncai (Changsha Evening News): Will a lower legal marriage age boost the birth rate for sure? Not necessarily. Currently, the clear trend is that in the economically developed first- and second-tier cities, people are more likely to marry late and are less willing to have children.

To lower the age is a simplistic and almost silly idea to encourage people to get married early. As a matter of fact, lowering the age will not only fail to encourage marriage or push up the birth rate, it will also result in a string of negative outcomes. The divorce rate will rise, college students will be distracted, which will affect their future career, and the anxiety of those in their 30s or older who have not married will deepen.

Better living conditions have increased the lifespan of the Chinese, so people now have more time to enjoy their marital life. Why push them into marriage when they are still very young? Let people go into marriage at a mature age, which will be more helpful for individuals, their families and society in the long run.

Xiang Xiangrong (news.crjwz.com): Most people have expressed their opposition to a lower legal marriage age in the survey by The Beijing News. The proposal triggers questions like whether this will encourage students to fall in love in middle school and then get married after high school graduation. Who will take care of their babies if they have them at an early age? How can they manage their college work if they have babies to take care of? Who will pay for the babies' food and everything else?

Most people believe that adolescents are still psychologically immature. If the lower age suggestion is adopted, more problems than benefits will follow, such as a higher divorce rate and more people living off of their elderly parents. Also, the education of these young parents' babies will suffer since the parents may not be able to support it.

However, at the same time, there were still 20 percent of the survey participants who supported a lower legal marriage age. They have given the example of "marriages" in the rural areas, where a lot of young people undergo a wedding ceremony before they are old enough to get a marriage certificate. So to forbid young people to get married before 22 is ineffective. To modify the legal age so as to legalize this kind of "marriage" in the rural areas will better protect these young people.

The right to marry is a basic civil right. An 18-year-old citizen has the right to marry and from this perspective, to force them to get married only at 22 is inhuman.

To allow young people to get married at 18 is different from, say, forcing people to marry at 18. Whether supporting or opposing a lower legal age, people have provided rational arguments. However, the question is not whether we should support or oppose it, but whether a lower age will really help to realize something.

To lower the age will not directly reverse the declining marriage rate and population aging. Remaining single in one's 30s or even later is a result of economic growth. Young people are choosing not to get married because of high social and living pressures.

While the current legal marriage age is a bit high, the Chinese marry at 26 for males and around 24 for females on an average. Therefore, the current marriage threshold has almost no impact.

Some people are worried that the current legal marriage age will lead to a sharply shrinking labor force. However, the reality is not as bleak as they think. China's labor force, aged between 15 and 64, stands at 990 million and will be 820 million in 2050. Thanks to technological advancements and artificial intelligence, more work will be done by robots in the future.

Besides, talent dividend is more important than a demographic dividend. To simply lower the marriage age will not help to produce a high-quality labor force and the increase of a low-quality labor force will pose a threat to social stability and development.

Copyedited by Sudeshna Sarkar