Research on the Marriage and Love Status of Rural Youth Groups

Abstract

Accelerated social and economic transformation increasingly highlights the urban-rural gap, and the marriage and love choices of rural youth have become an important vane for observing social structure changes. Recent research outlines how this group of young people make complex value trade-offs between the traditions of their ancestors and urban concepts. We can see that they are particularly vulnerable to several structural constraints, such as the fragility of the local economy (the household debt-income ratio in the research area reached 127%), the inequality of educational opportunities (their college enrollment rate is 34% lower than that of urban youth), and the severe imbalance of the gender ratio (the male-female ratio in the marriageable population reaches 143 to 100). Today's young people tend to make individual autonomous choices in their marriage attitudes. However, there is an irreconcilable tension between this and the severe material reality. Our field surveys in six provincial demonstration areas have found some situations. 62% of the interviewed young people said that they value the educational background of their partners more than traditional betrothal gifts. At the same time, as many as 78% of them admitted that they had to postpone their wedding dates because they couldn't afford to buy a house. This internal contradiction between cognition and reality clearly reminds us that a multi-dimensional intervention plan combining concept guidance and institutional innovation is urgently needed. When young people master the debugging skills of the intelligent greenhouse temperature control system, their bargaining power in the marriage and love market has simultaneously had a statistically significant leap.