I’ve always loved demography. It came into play back into my health-care analyst days, and it is probably the most significant factor in the global economy right now.
On Friday, I was in Chengdu’s Peoples Park. It’s delightful, with a mix of monuments, snack vendors, garden paths, and a lake where you can rent rowboats. The thing that amused me no end, though, was the marriage market. Parents come to the park and post signs advertising their children. They hobnob, too, trying to find a suitable match for their family. Because of China’s one-child policy, marriage is disproportionately important to the parents’ old age: this spouse will be the one taking care of them. One consequence of the one-child policy is a relative shortage of women, and, successful urban singles everywhere are picky. With millions of options, it’s easy to be even more so.
