What Do China’s Divorce Rates Reveal? A Decade of Data Visualization and Analysis

Introduction

In late 2020, the public discussion about divorce surged following the announcement of a celebrity couple’s separation. To provide a factual perspective, this article examines China’s divorce rate trends using official statistical data.

Data Acquisition

The required data are openly available on the National Bureau of Statistics website: https://data.stats.gov.cn/easyquery.htm?cn=C01&zb=A0P0C&sj=2019 . No web‑scraping is needed; the datasets can be downloaded directly.

Preliminary Analysis

After loading the national dataset, we observe records for marriage registrations, domestic marriage registrations, and divorce registrations. The crude divorce rate is defined as the number of divorces divided by the total population. For 2019, the crude divorce rate was 3.36‰ (3.36 divorces per 1,000 people).

Trend Visualization

Using pyecharts.Line, we plotted the crude divorce rate for the past ten years. The line chart shows a clear upward trajectory, with the rate increasing by approximately 1.7 times from 2010 to 2019.

Provincial Distribution

For 2019, the national average crude divorce rate was 3.36‰. We extracted the same metric for all 31 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities, then visualized the distribution with a pie chart. Sixteen provinces had rates above the average, while the rest were below, indicating a fairly balanced national landscape.

Geographic Heatmap

A spatial heatmap highlights regional differences. Contrary to expectations, higher divorce rates appear in Tianjin, Chongqing, and Guizhou, while the three northeastern provinces also show elevated values.

Beijing vs. Shanghai Comparison

Using the Altair library, we compared the crude divorce rates of Beijing and Shanghai over the same period. Both cities exhibit similar cyclical patterns, but Beijing consistently records a higher rate than Shanghai.

Conclusion

The visualized data demonstrate a steady increase in China’s divorce rate over the past decade, reflecting broader social changes such as rising living standards and shifting personal priorities. While the overall trend is upward, regional disparities persist, suggesting that local socioeconomic factors also play a significant role.