经济学人 亚洲女性们拒绝婚姻

Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious亚洲女性们拒绝婚姻，带来严重社会影响Aug 20th 2011 | from the print editionTWENTY years ago a debate erupted about whether there were specific “Asian values”. Most attention focused on dubious claims by autocrats that democracy was not among them. But a more intriguing, if less noticed, argument was that traditional family values were stronger in Asia than in America and Europe, and that this partly accounted for Asia’s economic success. In the words of Lee Kuan Yew, former prime minister of Singapore and a keen advocate of Asian values, the Chinese family encouraged “scholarship and hard work and thrift and deferment of present enjoyment for future gain”.20年前爆发过一场是否存在特定“亚洲价值观”的争论。

争论的焦点主要集中在亚洲独裁者们关于民主并不在其中的含糊论调上。

但是一个也许不那么惹眼却更让人感兴趣的说法是，亚洲人的传统家庭观念比美洲和欧洲人要强，而这也是亚洲经济取得如此成功的部分原因。

新加波前总理李光耀积极倡导亚洲价值观，用他的话说，中国家庭鼓励“求知上进，辛勤工作，勤俭节约，吃苦在前，享乐在后”。

On the face of it his claim appears persuasive still. In most of Asia, marriage is widespread and illegitimacy almost unknown. In contrast, half of marriages in some Western countries end in divorce, and half of all children are born outside wedlock. The recent riots across Britain, whose origins many believe lie in an absence of either parental guidance or filial respect, seem to underline a profound difference between East and West.表面来看，李光耀的说法现在似乎依旧盛行。

在亚洲大部分地区，婚姻是很普遍的现象，非婚生子女几乎无人知晓。

相比之下，在一些西方国家，大约半数的婚姻以离婚告终，而且有一半的孩子是非婚生的。

很多人认为英国近期的暴乱，就是由于父母缺乏教导或是子女不孝，这似乎也凸显了东西方之间的巨大差异。

Yet marriage is changing fast in East, South-East and South Asia, even though each region has different traditions. The changes are different from those that took place in the West in the second half of the 20th century. Divorce, though rising in some countries, remains comparatively rare. What’s happening in Asia is a flight from marriage (see article).然而，在东亚、东南亚和南亚，尽管各自有着不同的传统，人们对待婚姻的态度正迅速发生改变。

这些变化和20世纪下半叶西方的变化不同。

尽管某些亚洲国家的离婚率在上升，但相对来说还很低。

亚洲的变化在于人们不愿意结婚。

（见文章）Marriage rates are falling partly because people are postponing getting hitched. Marriage ages have risen all over the world, but the increase is particularly marked in Asia. People there now marry even later than they do in the West. The mean age of marriage in the richest places—Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong—has risen sharply in the past few decades, to reach 29-30 for women and 31-33 for men.结婚率正在降低，这部分是由于人们推迟走进婚姻。

全世界的结婚年龄都有所上升，但是亚洲最为突出。

现在亚洲人甚至比西方人结婚还晚。

过去几十年，亚洲最富裕地区——日本，台湾，韩国，香港的平均结婚年龄已大幅上升：女性是29至30岁，男性是31至33岁。

A lot of Asians are not marrying later. They are not marrying at all. Almost a third of Japanese women in their early 30s are unmarried; probably half of those will always be. Over one-fifth of Taiwanese women in their late 30s are single; most will never marry. In some places, rates of non-marriage are especially striking: in Bangkok, 20% of 40-44-year old women are not married; in Tokyo, 21%; among university graduates of that age in Singapore, 27%. So far, the trend has not affected Asia’s two giants, China and India. But it is likely to, as the economic factors that have driven it elsewhere in Asia sweep through those two countries as well; and its consequences will be exacerbated by the sex-selective abortion practised for a generation there. By 2050, there will be 60m more men of marriageable age than women in China and India.很多亚洲人不是晚婚，而是根本不打算结婚。

三十出头的日本女性中，有近三分之一的人还没结婚，也许她们中有一半人将永远不结婚。

奔四的台湾女性中，有五分之一以上是单身，大多数不会结婚了。

某些地区的不婚率尤其高的惊人：在曼谷，有20%的40至44岁大龄女性没有结婚；在东京这一比例是21%。

新加坡这一年龄段且拥有大学学历的女性中，有27%的人没有结婚。

目前为止，这一趋势还没有影响到亚洲的两大巨头，中国和印度。

但是以后可能会有影响，因为导致亚洲其他国家出现这一现象的经济因素，也已经席卷了中国和印度。

而且由于这两国存在选择性堕胎现象，会使得影响更加严重。

到2050年，中国和印度的适婚男女中，男性会比女性多6000多万。

The joy of staying single单身的乐趣Women are retreating from marriage as they go into the workplace. That’s partly because, for a woman, being both employed and married is tough in Asia. Women there are the primary caregivers for husbands, children and, often, for ageing parents; and even when in full-time employment, they are expected to continue to play this role. This is true elsewhere in the world, but the burden that Asian women carry is particularly heavy. Japanese women, who typically work 40 hours a week in the office, then do, on average, another 30 hours of housework. Their husbands, on average, do three hours. And Asian women who give up work to look after children find it hard to return when the offspring are grown. Not surprisingly, Asian women have an unusually pessimistic view of marriage. According to a survey carried out this year, many fewer Japanese women felt positive about their marriage than did Japanese men, or American women or men.由于女性有了自己的工作，她们对于婚姻打了退堂鼓。