Econ-Sentiment Twin Think Tank · Value Conservation Argument Series
Romantic love and marriage, argued through the Law of Value Conservation
Through the Law of Value Conservation (multiplication and division, macro and micro) and the 7-Layer Depth Model, we examine how the breakdown of romantic love and marriage harms the economy and society: the four indicators — marriage rate, divorce rate, infidelity rate, and new births — and the erosion of micro-level happiness, which in turn drags down macro-level economic data. Without emotion, there is no reason to consume. The Qixi-festival spending has shrunk for years, and the “simp economy” has collapsed. Good institutions make bad people good; bad institutions make good people bad — this is the natural selection of multiplication and division. The spread of extreme feminism, double standards between the sexes, the Datong engagement-rape case, the “Zhui Feng Xiao Ye” case, and the “help-or-not” incidents in the court of public opinion has made everyone self-centered, undermining normal interaction between men and women and thereby damaging economic and social value. Let emotion be exchanged voluntarily and fairly, so that everyone dares to love, marry, bear children, and spend — only then can the economy be revitalized and tax revenue increased, with the three multipliers E/S/T all simultaneously greater than 1, letting wealth and emotion, trust and consumption, present and future generations grow together.
Just as the law of conservation of energy pervades the natural world, so too, from the holistic perspective of the economy, society, and the people, economic value, social value, and time value are neither created out of nothing nor vanish into nothing; they merely transform from one form into another or transfer from one subject to another, while the total amount of value remains unchanged.
Macro: Y = E × S × T = Economic Value × Social Value × Time Value = Aggregate Economic–Social Value (In this article: E = marriage-and-love consumption, household production, and the housing/wedding/maternal-and-baby/education chain; S = trust between the sexes, family stability, intergenerational transmission, and social cohesion; T = childbirth, population structure, long-term growth, and the tax base)
Micro: y = f(m,h,t) = f(m) × f(h) × f(t) = f(m) Monetary Value × f(h) Happiness Experience × f(t) Time Value (In this article: m = income, bride-price, marital home, child-raising costs; h = belonging, intimacy, being seen; t = marital compound interest, intergenerational transmission, companionship in old age)
“The Value Cube · Three Readings of the Formula”—fold the two formulas above back into geometry: every variable is an edge, and the multiplication sign is the volume. Three readings (macro adds, micro multiplies / value never disappears, it only changes shape / 1 is the only watershed in multiplication), 12 isometric plates, and a verbatim script you can read aloud.
The Answer in One Sentence
The deeper nature of romantic love and marriage is the conservation of value. Place it within Y = E × S × T: E is economic value (marriage-and-love consumption, household production, the housing/wedding/maternal-and-baby/education chain); S is social value (trust between the sexes, family stability, intergenerational transmission, social cohesion); T is time value (childbirth, population structure, long-term growth, the tax base). The essence of the marriage-and-love breakdown is that all three multipliers are divided down at once — the falling marriage rate divides down T (6.106 million marriages registered in 2024, only 45% of the 2013 peak of 13.469 million, with the marriage rate falling from 9.9‰ to 4.3‰); the divorce and infidelity rates divide down S (3.513 million divorces in 2024, infidelity rate about 24.4%); births divide T to the brink (7.92 million born in 2025, the first drop below 8 million since 1949, total fertility rate about 1.0). And institutions are the switch of multiplication and division: good institutions make bad people good (the one-year cooling-off period cut marriage registrations by about 43%, and Article 184 of the Civil Code exempts those who help others from liability); bad institutions make good people bad (the Peng Yu case erased the trust of “help-or-not,” and the Zhui Feng Xiao Ye case erased the trust of “men and women sharing public space”) — when trust (S) is divided down by institutions and public opinion, consumption (E) and childbirth (T) are divided away together, and the total economic and social value goes to zero.
Macro and Micro Dual Formulas
Macro: Economic–Social Value = Economic Value × Social Trust × Time Compound Interest
Y = E × S × T
For the whole society, E is economic value (consumption, investment, tax, GDP), S is social value (trust, family stability, relations between the sexes, cultural cohesion), and T is time value (population structure, fertility, intergenerational transmission, long-term growth). Marriage and love are among the largest multiplier engines of the economy and society: with every step the marriage rate falls, the entire chain of marital homes, weddings, maternal-and-baby goods, education, and household consumption contracts in sync — marital homes were once the “steadiest rigid-demand base” of the property market, yet within three short years over 180,000 wedding firms nationwide closed down; the maternal-and-baby market, though as large as 6.65 trillion yuan, has turned into a stock market as newborns fell below 8 million. The singles economy reaches 5.8 trillion yuan, and single young people spend 18.7% more per year than married people, but mostly on self-pleasing consumption rather than household reproduction — “Without emotion, there is no reason to consume” — this is precisely the erosion of E at the macro level caused by the marriage-and-love breakdown.
Micro: One person's marriage-and-love value = Monetary Condition × Happiness Experience × Long-Term Commitment
y = f(m) × f(h) × f(t)
For one person, m is the monetary condition (income, bride-price, marital home, child-raising costs), h is the happiness experience (belonging, intimacy, being seen), and t is the long-term commitment (marital compound interest, intergenerational transmission, companionship in old age). This micro formula directly explains how “marriage costs push f(m) to the limit”: the national average bride-price in 2024 was about 122,700 yuan; adding the marital home, wedding banquet, and the “three golds,” an ordinary family's average total marriage cost is about 768,000 yuan — 15 years of saving without spending a cent for an ordinary worker. Yet marriage should be the greatest multiplier of happiness: the China Household Finance Survey's National Happiness Report shows married people have the highest happiness index at 131.5 of all states. But when f(m) rises so high it scares people off marriage, f(h) is divided down by infidelity and cold violence, and f(t) is overdrawn by high divorce rates, all three multipliers fall below 1 together, and marriage and love degenerate from “happiness compound interest” into an “actuarial burden,” and the desire to consume goes out.
The Division View: S = Y ÷ (E × T) — How a Marriage Held Together by “Calculation” Is Divided Away
The division mirror of value conservation is the sharpest mirror in marriage and love. When institutions and public opinion are out of order, social trust (S) is divided down again and again, and every daily interaction must pay an extra defensive cost. The Peng Yu case is a typical division. In 2006 in Nanjing, Peng Yu helped an elderly person who had fallen and was instead sentenced to pay 45,876 yuan in compensation; the court's reasoning — “If you didn't hit him, why did you help him?” — amplified by the media, spawned a nationwide “help-or-not” trust crisis. The 18 passers-by who walked around the toddler Yueyue in Foshan, Guangdong, in 2011 was seen as its negative continuation, until Article 184 of the Civil Code in 2021, the “good Samaritan clause,” restored the exemption of those who help others back to multiplication at the institutional level. The Zhui Feng Xiao Ye case is a division closer to everyday life between men and women. In 2023 on the Chengdu metro, a man (Zhui Feng Xiao Ye) was publicly accused of secret photography by two women because the reflection on his shoe shone; the police cleared him on the spot, yet his personality-rights lawsuit was dismissed at both first and second instance and his retrial rejected — 800 days of rights defense yielded only “three apologies.” The gap between legal innocence and moral disorder divided down the everyday trust of “strangers of opposite sexes sharing public space.” The Datong engagement-rape case amplifies the loss in the fuzzy zone between bride-price and marriage trust — accused of rape the day after the engagement, the dispute over a ten-year prison sentence, and the deadlock of the 100,000-yuan bride-price “returned but uncollected” — pushed marriage and love from “promised by affection” to ‛oprotecting oneself by proof.” The division mirror asks: do these institutions and this public opinion let emotion do multiplication, or divide trust back by S?
Marriage & Love mapped onto E/S/T
The Four Dimensions of Marriage & Love Each Light Up One of the E/S/T Multipliers
Commitment (marriage) carries the heaviest weight of S·trust and T·transmission; marital stability (never abandoning) is the ballast of S·trust; population continuity (childbirth) is the engine of T·time value; and emotional consumption (self-pleasing and family) is the direct engine of E·economic value — only when all four dimensions work in sync does marriage and love truly upgrade from a “private matter” into an “economic–social engine.” When the four indicators fail at once, it equals all four multipliers being divided down together. Value Conservation Methodology assessment model, illustrative, non-sample statistics
Figure 1 · The four dimensions of marriage and love each light up E/S/T: commitment and marital stability focus on growing S, population continuity focuses on front-loading T, and emotional consumption focuses on activating E — “Without emotion, there is no reason to consume” means exactly this: when S and T are divided down, E (consumption) goes out too. (Value Conservation Methodology assessment model, illustrative)
The Panorama of Marriage & Love Collapse · Four Indicators
Marriage Rate · Time Value T Divided Down
Marriage registrations fell steadily from the 2013 peak of 13.469 million couples (marriage rate 9.9‰) to below 8 million in 2021, and in 2024 6.106 million couples, a marriage rate of only 4.3‰, down 20.5% year on year; in 2025, boosted by “nationwide same-day marriage registration + double-spring year,” they rebounded to 6.763 million couples (+10.76%), but in the first half of 2026 fell again to 3.275 million couples (−7.46%). First marriages dropped from the 2013 peak of 23.8596 million to 9.1723 million in 2024, a 55.9% drop over nine years; the average age at first marriage is 30.4 for men and 28.6 for women. The marriage rate is the first multiplier of T (intergenerational transmission): with fewer marriages, the entire household consumption chain of marital homes, weddings, maternal-and-baby goods, and education is divided down.
Divorce Rate · Social Trust S Divided Down
In 2024, divorces registered and adjudicated totaled 3.513 million couples (2.622 million civil affairs + 0.891 million courts), a divorce rate of 2.5‰; in 2025, 2.743 million couples. After the Civil Code's “divorce cooling-off period” took effect in 2021, civil-affairs divorce registrations that year fell to 2.139 million, a sharp drop of about 43% from 2020 — yet public debate over the cooling-off period has never stopped. The divorce rate is the most direct division of S (trust): when the cost of leaving is lower than the cost of staying, commitment is divided back by S, and marriage and love degenerate from long-term compound interest into a short-term contract.
Infidelity Rate · Happiness Experience h Divided Down
A sample survey by the Institute of Sexuality and Sociology at Renmin University (media-relayed caliber) shows the intra-marital infidelity rate in 2025 was about 24.4% (27.5% men, 21.3% women, versus about 8% in 2000); according to the Supreme People's Court, about 58% of divorce lawsuits involve extramarital affairs; a private sample claims at least one spouse cheated in 41% of married households. The infidelity rate is the divider-by-zero of f(h) in the micro happiness y=f(m)×f(h)×f(t): it does not directly change GDP, yet it drains the “happiness experience” of every marriage, making countless families consume themselves in suspicion and shrink economically.
Births · Time Value T Divided to a Historic Low
National births fell from the “all-two-children” peak of 17.86 million in 2016 to 10.62 million in 2021, 9.56 million in 2022, 9.02 million in 2023, a rebound to 9.54 million in the dragon year of 2024, and 7.92 million in 2025 — the first drop below 8 million since 1949, a birth rate of 5.63‰, total fertility rate about 1.0, year-end 2025 population of 1,404.89 million, a net decrease of 3.39 million, natural growth rate −2.41‰. Births are the final outlet of T (time value): with the marriage rate and happiness experience divided down, childbirth loses speed — the population is not “calculated” away, it is “divided” away.
A Decade of Marriage Registrations: From Peak to Halved and Back Down
The 13.469 million couples of 2013 was the high point of the century; thereafter it fell unilaterally for a decade, dropping to 6.106 million in 2024; the 2025 “nationwide registration + double-spring year” pushed a rebound, but the first half of 2026 fell again. This curve is the most intuitive macro evidence of “T divided down” in E×S×T. Data source: the Ministry of Civil Affairs' annual Civil Affairs Development Statistical Bulletins.
Figure 2 · Changes in marriage registrations (2013–2025, million couples): 2013 13.469 → 2014 13.067 → 2015 12.247 → 2016 11.428 → 2017 10.631 → 2018 10.139 → 2019 9.273 → 2020 8.131 → 2021 7.636 → 2022 6.835 → 2023 7.682 → 2024 6.106 → 2025 6.763. (Ministry of Civil Affairs bulletins; 2020–2021 affected by the pandemic and policy overlap)
Four Indicators × E/S/T Matrix: Each Indicator Is a Divided-Down Multiplier
| Indicator | Divided-Down Multiplier | Data Facts | If Improving (Multiplication) | If Collapsing (Division) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marriage rate | T · Time Value | 2024: 6.106M couples / 4.3‰; first marriages down 55.9% in 9 yrs | Marital-home · wedding · maternal-baby · education chain resonates | Household-reproduction chain contracts overall |
| Divorce rate | S · Social Value (Trust) | 2024: 3.513M couples / 2.5‰; civil registrations down ~43% after cooling-off | Compound commitment, long-term asset accumulation | In-marriage property games, custody attrition |
| Infidelity rate | S·h (Social Value · Happiness Experience) | RUC survey ~24.4% (media caliber); 58% of divorces involve affairs | Intimate trust amplifies happiness and output | Trust to zero, family happiness drained |
| Births | T · Time Value (Transmission) | 2025: 7.92M, first below 8M since 1949, TFR ~1.0 | Demographic dividend, intergenerational consumption relay | Population decline, pensions and domestic demand strained |
Four Topics × Multiplication/Division Arguments
Institutional MirrorGood institutions make bad people good, bad institutions make good people bad — institutions are the switch of multiplication and division
Deng Xiaoping once said, “A good system prevents bad people from acting arbitrarily; a bad system prevents good people from doing good to their full capacity.” North, from institutional economics, noted that “bad institutions make good people do bad things, and good institutions make bad people do good things.” Marriage and love are precisely the touchstone of this institution: the same group of people, under a divorce cooling-off period, the good-Samaritan clause, and nationwide registration, will run marriage as compound interest; under property arbitrage and bare trust, they will run marriage as a zero-sum game. Multiply or divide — the switch is in the institution's hands.
Multiplication Argument · Good Institutions Turn a “Bad Person's” Ill Will into Good
Nationwide same-day marriage registration saves “those who want to marry” a trip (E×T); over 20 provinces including Shanxi and Gansu extended marriage leave to 30 days, and Ningbo, Zhejiang issued marriage consumption vouchers, using institutional dividends to multiply “marriage”; Article 1077 of the Civil Code's divorce cooling-off period in 2021 cut civil divorce registrations by about 43% — even the most impulsive divorce was forcibly “divided” back to reason by 30 days; Article 184's “good Samaritan clause” shields those who help others from liability, turning “help-or-not” from a life-and-death torture into a small effort. The institution is the default: default trust, default goodwill, so even bad people can only do good. This is precisely the multiplication logic of “good institutions make bad people good” — rules make kindness the least-effort choice.
Division Mirror · Imbalanced Institutional Scales: Property Arbitrage and Non-Paternity Trust Divide Even Good People Back
Once an institution leaves an ‛arbitrage opening,” good people are forced into evildoers. First, community property and divorce arbitrage: China practices post-marital joint-property, and Article 1087 of the Civil Code favors children, the wife, and the faultless party in division — intended to protect the family community, but when trust is absent it becomes a chip in divorce games: marriage fraud and bride-price scams, transferring property during the cooling-off period, fabricating joint debts (media and judicial practice repeatedly report this), turning “divorce/marriage fraud” from an emotional tragedy into a “profitable” calculation, objectively accelerating the breakup of marriages that could have been repaired. Second, the trust collapse of in-marriage non-paternity: media relay that in 2024 a provincial-capital paternity institution's 3,800 commissions found about 22% excluded biological fatherhood (another judicial institution's caliber about 5%, highly sample-biased, large caliber differences), and cases like “a man married 8 years, all 3 children not his” keep fermenting in public opinion — for men, raising a child with all one's wealth and emotion only to find it is not one's own divides f(h), f(t), and S, the three multipliers, all down toward zero, extinguishing the drive to “settle down and build a career” faster than any public opinion. The two ends of the institutional scale: one side adds with dividends, the other divides with loopholes, and good people can only learn self-protection.
Trial by Public OpinionAnomie in the Court of Public Opinion: Social Trust S Divided Away Again and Again
Public opinion should be an amplifier of facts, but when “labels precede facts, trials precede evidence,” it becomes a divider-by-zero of S. The Peng Yu case, the Zhui Feng Xiao Ye case, the Datong engagement-rape case — three cases, three ways of “trust divided away,” together pushing the cost of normal interaction between men and women to a historic high.
Multiplication Argument · The Judiciary Settles Disputes and Restores Trust Divided Away by Opinion
The judiciary is the “last multiplication” of trust: the Datong engagement-rape case, through first instance (Dec 25, 2023, 3 years imprisonment) and second instance (Apr 16, 2025, upheld), drew the bottom line that “engagement does not equal sexual consent,” preventing the case from being swayed by emotion; Article 184 of the Civil Code's good-Samaritan clause legislatively exempts those who help others, gradually restoring the “help-or-not” trust divided away after the Peng Yu case back to multiplication; after the Zhui Feng Xiao Ye case's second instance upheld the original, public opinion also keeps discussing “how to balance protecting real victims and preventing false accusations” — the law settles disputes in individual cases, essentially “backstopping” the interaction cost of the whole society. The multiplication value of institutions and judiciary is not in satisfying everyone, but in making rules predictable: predictable rules are the prerequisite for low-cost trust.
Division Mirror · Three Cases, Three Ways Trust Is Divided Away
Peng Yu case(2006 Nanjing; helped an elderly person, yet sentenced to pay 45,876 yuan; the reasoning “if you didn't hit him, why did you help?” amplified by media) → a nationwide “help-or-not” trust crisis; the 18 passers-by who walked around the Foshan toddler Yueyue in 2011 was seen as its negative continuation;Zhui Feng Xiao Ye case(2023 Chengdu metro; a man's shoe reflection was publicly accused of secret photography by two women; police cleared him on the spot, yet his personality-rights lawsuit was dismissed at first and second instance and retrial rejected; 800 days of rights defense yielded only three apologies) → the everyday trust of “strangers of opposite sexes in public space” divided down; men's defensive cost of public travel surged;Datong engagement-rape case(engaged May 1, 2023, accused of rape the next day; the 100,000-yuan bride-price “returned but uncollected” deadlock) → the fuzzy zone between bride-price and marriage trust amplified into ‛oprotecting oneself by proof.” The three cases converge into one signal: when the cost of being wronged exceeds the cost of wronging others, rational people choose defense, and defense is dividing S.
Extreme Double StandardsThe “Double-Standard Consensus” of Mutual Harm Between Sexes: Everyone Self-Centered, Normal Interaction Destroyed
The court of public opinion is forming a “winning-both-ways” double-standard narrative, summarized by netizens as a “consensus”: conservative bride-price, open body, independent mind, dependent economy, strong character, determination to marry up, wishful conditions, worship-the-foreign values, random children, disallowed definitions. And that widely circulated observation — “she enjoyed this era's openness, freedom, passion, and decadence, yet picked up traditional weapons only when she met you.” The flood of extreme feminism and gender double standards have degraded marriage and love from “two-way pursuit” to “zero-sum game.”
Multiplication Argument · Equal Rights Is the Greatest Multiplier: Respect Differences, Each in Their Place
A healthy gender relationship is the multiplication base of E×S×T: each side independent yet fulfilling the other — men provide stability and support (f(m)), women provide intimacy and nourishment (f(h)), both share time compound interest (f(t)). The China Economic Life Survey shows those with partners but unmarried have happiness (45.62%) comparable to married (44.16%), both higher than single (43.96%); in the China Household Finance Survey's National Happiness Report, married people's happiness index of 131.5 is the highest of all states — the data show intimate relationships themselves are not a burden, but the greatest life lever. True equal rights mean “rights and responsibilities are equal”: want a bride-price, also bear the duty to build together; want freedom, also keep the promise; want independence, also learn to depend and be depended on. When both sides multiply for each other, the relationship grows more valuable the longer it lasts.
Division Mirror · The Double-Standard Consensus: Take All Rights, Shirk All Duties, Dividing Trust Negative
The essence of “double standards” is taking only the multiplier and bearing none of the divisor: demanding traditional bride-price yet rejecting traditional chastity, claiming modern independence yet not giving up economic dependence, asserting absolute freedom yet accepting no definition or constraint — when one side takes all it wants and leaves all it should bear to the other, the relationship has only division left. Extreme feminism marks men as “naturally guilty” and marriage as “natural exploitation,” and with the fermentation of individual cases in public opinion, breeds an interaction environment of “everyone self-centered, defense everywhere”: men withdraw for fear of accusation, women demand for fear of being let down; the two sexes turn from comrades into opponents. Worse, “random children” (non-paternity) combined with “worship-the-foreign values” divide both national continuity and family trust down together. Double standards make no side win — they just make the marriage-and-love cake negative, and both sides starve.
Emotional ExchangeWithout Emotion There Is No Reason to Consume: Let Emotion Be Voluntary and Fair, Revitalize the Economy and Raise Tax
Emotion is the “igniter” of consumption: Qixi flowers, engagement “three golds,” wedding banquets, post-marital maternal-and-baby and education — each is “paying for love.” Conversely, without emotion there is no reason to consume — the year-on-year shrinkage of Qixi spending, the collapse of the “simp economy,” and the halving of the diamond market are all proof that E is dragged down by S and T. The way out is to return emotion to “voluntary, fair exchange.”
Multiplication Argument · Voluntary Fair Emotional Exchange = Consumption Engine × Tax Growth
Marriage and love are the largest consumption engine of the economy and society: in 2024 the narrow wedding market was about 2.84 trillion yuan, the broad marriage-and-love related consumption about 14.32 trillion yuan (iiMedia Research); in 2025 the wedding-culture market was about 2.3 trillion yuan, per-capita wedding spending over 130,000 yuan; policies like nationwide same-day marriage registration, extended marriage leave, and marriage consumption vouchers multiply consumption by “lowering the marriage threshold.” Conversely, “let emotion be exchanged voluntarily and fairly” means: bride-price has rules to follow (65.42% of respondents accept zero bride-price), marriage services are transparent and trustworthy, and marital contracts have clear rights and duties — when both sexes enter relationships with confidence, the whole industrial chain of marital homes, weddings, maternal-and-baby, and education re-ignites, consumption drives GDP, transactions generate tax, and E, S, T rise together, economy and marriage multiplying together. The 2026 No. 1 Central Document named high bride-prices for the seventh consecutive time and for the first time proposed joint governance across provincial borders — paving the way for “fair exchange” from the institutional side.
Division Mirror · The Simp Economy Collapses: A “Deformed Exchange” of One-Sided Giving Is Bound to Be Divided Away
The division side of “without emotion there is no reason to consume” is the continuous collapse of consumption data: in 2025 Qixi flower orders plummeted (multiple platforms −41% to −90%), Baidu index −52%, mall promotion budgets −38%; 2022 was still the peak of the “simp economy” (gifts +162.8%, gold +280%), yet 2026 Qixi flowers nearly halved, jewelry pre-sales −35%, movie screenings −60%; 2023 diamond market −27%. More extreme is the chain collapse of the “female-beauty economy”: 2025 nightclub foot traffic −77%, bars −60%, high-end venues closed 35%, aesthetic clinics 40% shut. The singles economy reaches 5.8 trillion yuan and singles spend 18.7% more per year than married people, but mostly on self-pleasing consumption that cannot replace household reproduction — when “simping” becomes one-sided support and “buying” cannot buy equal affection, this deformed exchange is divided away by the market's vote with its feet sooner or later. Likewise, those who earn quick money through “marriage arbitrage” overdraw the trust of the entire marriage market — the more marriage fraud and bride-price scams, the fewer willing to give real feeling and real money, and in the end the economy pays together.
Pain Points of All Sides · Five Stakeholder Groups
Five Groups' Pain Intensity: In the Marriage-and-Love Collapse, No One Wins
The marriage-and-love collapse is not a “victory” for any side, but suffering shared by five groups — men crushed by marriage costs and the trust crisis, women kidnapped by mate-choice anxiety and age pressure, the marriage-and-love industry withering as demand shrinks, families and generations torn between bride-price and pressure to marry, and the whole society paying for population and consumption losing speed. Every pain point is the result of some multiplier being divided down. Value Conservation Methodology assessment model, illustrative, non-sample statistics
Figure 3 · Five groups' marriage-and-love pain intensity (illustrative): marriageable men (92) and society as a whole (88) hurt most — the former crushed triply by marriage cost, trust crisis, and non-paternity risk, the latter paying for population decline and consumption going out; the marriage-and-love industry (78) and family-generational (74) next; marriageable women's (86) pain lies in the gap between mate standards and reality, and gender mutual harm under the “in-marriage non-paternity” stigma. (Value Conservation Methodology assessment model, illustrative)
Five Groups' Demands: Each Side's “Pain Point” Is the Result of the Corresponding Multiplier Being Divided Down
Marriageable Men · Marriage Cost Must Fall, Trust Must Have a Floor
Average bride-price about 122,700, total marriage cost about 768,000 (15 years of saving), compounded by trust risks like “non-paternity birth” and “being accused of secret photography,” men “dare not marry, dare not trust.” Pain = f(m) divided to the limit by cost, S divided down by public opinion.
Marriageable Women · Safety and Freedom, Marriage and Self Must Coexist
On one side the “material anchoring” of the high-bride-price era, on the other the tug of age anxiety and independence demands, plus the gender-mutual-harm stigma of “in-marriage infidelity, non-paternity.” Pain = mismatch of f(h) and f(m), a lose-lose in gender trust.
Marriage-and-Love Industry · Shrinking Demand, the Whole Chain Divided Away
The 2.84-trillion wedding market was once a rigid-demand base, yet in three years over 180,000 wedding firms closed, Qixi spending halved, the diamond market −27%, the simp economy collapsed. Pain = E's multiplication divided down with the marriage rate.
Family and Generations · Bride-Price Games and Pressure-to-Marry Tear Apart
Parents pour all savings into their children's bride-price and wear themselves out pressuring them to marry; the No. 1 Central Document has named high bride-prices seven times, and Jiangxi/Fujian starting bride-prices of 388,000 terrify ordinary families. Pain = intergenerational T's transmission divided off by bride-price.
Society as a Whole · Population and Consumption Both Lose Speed
Births of 7.92 million hit a 1949 low, natural growth −2.41‰, total fertility about 1.0; the 5.8-trillion singles economy cannot save domestic demand — population decline and consumption going out are cause and effect. Pain = all three multipliers of Y=E×S×T divided down together.
Five Groups' Demands · The Right Fit
Five-Way Fit: No Best Marriage System, Only the Value Formula That Best Matches Human Nature
| Group | Pain point | Core demand | The right fit | Multiplication/division focus |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marriageable men | Bride-price + marital home cost 768k, non-paternity risk, accusation anxiety | Affordable marriage cost, predictable effort, trust with institutional backstop | Curb high bride-prices, relief for parent-child rights, govern anomie in public opinion | f(m) division → multiplication: make support predictable |
| Marriageable women | Tug of material anchoring vs independence demands, age anxiety, gender mutual harm | Safety and freedom together, no objectification, equal rights not privilege | Refine anti-domestic-violence / sexual-consent law, employment and childcare security, equal-rights education | f(h) division → multiplication: make intimacy feel safe |
| Marriage-and-love industry | Shrinking demand, 180k+ firms closed, consumption collapse | Marriage rate rebounds, transparent trustworthy services, consumption scenes restart | Marriage vouchers, longer leave, industry upgrade, platform compliance | E division → multiplication: re-ignite the consumption engine |
| Family and generations | Bride-price games, pressure-to-marry rifts, high child-raising cost | Unbroken intergenerational transmission, ruled bride-price, affordable childcare | Cross-province bride-price governance, childcare subsidies, universal childcare, education relief | T division → multiplication: keep transmission connected |
| Society as a whole | Population decline, domestic demand out, pension pressure | Sustainable population, consumption engine, tax source | Fertility-friendly society, voluntary fair emotional exchange, institutions settling disputes | Y=E×S×T returns together > 1 |
Official Data and Authoritative Books
A Decade of Births: The Final Proof of T Divided Down
From the “all-two-children” peak of 17.86 million in 2016 to 7.92 million in 2025, nearly halved in a decade; a brief rebound to 9.54 million in the dragon year of 2024, then losing speed again in 2025, the first drop below 8 million since 1949. The population curve does not lie: when marriage and happiness are divided down, childbirth is divided away. Data source: National Bureau of Statistics annual bulletins.
Figure 4 · National births change (2016–2025, ten thousand persons): 1786 → 1723 → 1523 → 1465 → 1200 → 1062 → 956 → 902 → 954 → 792. (National Bureau of Statistics bulletin; 2016 was the release peak of the all-two-children policy)
Textbooks and Bestsellers: The Classic Coordinate System of Marriage and Institutions
| Book / Source | Author / Publisher | Relevance to Value Conservation |
|---|---|---|
| A Treatise on the Family | Gary Becker (The Commercial Press) | 1992 Nobel Prize in Economics: the family is a “small factory,” marriage is market matching, divorce is the actuarial of remarriage gains and costs — marriage and love are naturally economics |
| Intimate Relationships(8th ed.) | Rowland Miller (People's Posts and Telecommunications Press) | The science of intimate relationships: attachment, communication, conflict repair — how f(h) happiness experience is managed into multiplication |
| The Art of Loving | Erich Fromm | Love is ability not luck: mature love is the multiplication of “giving,” immature love is the division of “taking” |
| Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance | Douglass North | Classic of institutional economics: bad institutions make good people do bad, good institutions make bad people do good — the institutional switch of multiplication and division |
| Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind | Yuval Noah Harari | Marriage and family are an “imagined community”: how trust (S) and stories (T) sustain human society |
| RUC Institute of Sexuality and Sociology survey | Pan Suiming's team | First-hand sample data on infidelity rates and changing sexual attitudes (media-relayed caliber) |
| China Household Finance Survey, National Happiness Report | Southwestern University of Finance and Economics | Married people's happiness index 131.5 is highest of all states — empirical proof of marriage's f(h) |
| China Economic Life Survey | CCTV Finance / National Bureau of Statistics et al. | Those with partners and married are happier than singles — the positive correlation of intimacy and happiness |
| Ministry of Civil Affairs Civil Affairs Development Statistical Bulletin + National Bureau of Statistics bulletin | Official first-hand data | Authoritative source for macro indicators like marriages, divorces, births |
Key Data List: Reading the Value Ledger of Marriage Collapse with Official and Authoritative Numbers
| Indicator | Data | Source / Caliber |
|---|---|---|
| Marriages registered (2024) | 6.106M couples, marriage rate 4.3‰, −20.5% YoY | MCA 2024 Civil Affairs Development Statistical Bulletin |
| Marriages registered (2025) | 6.763M couples, +10.76% YoY | MCA / China.org.cn |
| First marriages (2024) | 9.1723M, down 55.9% from 2013 peak | MCA annual bulletins |
| Divorces (2024) | 3.513M couples (MCA 2.622 + court 0.891), divorce rate 2.5‰ | MCA statistical bulletin |
| Intra-marital infidelity rate (2025) | about 24.4% (men 27.5% / women 21.3%) | RUC sexuality institute survey (media relay) |
| Births (2025) | 7.92M, first below 8M since 1949, natural growth −2.41‰ | NBS 2025 Statistical Bulletin |
| Avg bride-price / total marriage cost | about 122,700 / about 768,000 (15 yrs saving) | Composite media and survey relay |
| Wedding market (2024) | narrow ~2.84T / broad ~14.32T yuan | iiMedia Research |
| Singles economy | about 5.8T yuan; singles spend 18.7% more/yr than married | Composite media relay |
| Paternity-test non-biological rate | about 22% (a provincial-capital lab) / about 5% (Xiamen judicial) | Media and lab relay; large caliber gaps, clear sample bias |
Three-Dimensional Conservation · E/S/T
Three-Dimensional Conservation of Marriage Value: E Economic Value × S Social Value (Social Trust) × T Time Value
A healthy marriage-and-love system lights all three dimensions at once: E — consumption, weddings, maternal-and-baby, education, tax pulled by marriage and love; S — couple trust, trust between sexes, family stability, public-opinion and institutional trust; T — marriage, childbirth, intergenerational transmission, long-term population structure. Only when all three multipliers exceed 1 together does marriage enter the positive cycle of “happiness compound interest”; and the most dangerous now is: T (population continuity) is divided down the weakest — births below 8 million, total fertility about 1.0, the multiplication of time value is going out. Value Conservation Methodology assessment model, illustrative, non-sample statistics
Figure 5 · Marriage value three-dimensional conservation (Value Conservation Methodology assessment model, illustrative): S (78) still warm, E (72) shrinks with consumption collapse, T (55) weakest — births 7.92M, natural growth −2.41‰; population continuity, this time multiplier, is divided down the hardest. Once T weakens, E and S lose their future outlet.
E E · Economic Engine
Marriage and love are the igniter of consumption: in 2024 the narrow wedding market was about 2.84 trillion, broad marriage-and-love consumption about 14.32 trillion; the whole household-reproduction chain of marital homes, weddings, maternal-and-baby, education is the multiplication of E. But when “without emotion there is no reason to consume,” Qixi flowers halved, the simp economy collapsed, the diamond market −27%, and E is divided down with the marriage rate. For the E multiplier to exceed 1 depends on voluntary, fair exchange — people willing to spend for love, so consumption re-ignites and tax has a source.
S S · Trust Base
Couple trust, trust between sexes, family stability, institutional and public-opinion trust are all projects that grow S. The divorce cooling-off period divides impulsive divorce back to reason, and Article 184's good-Samaritan clause restores the “help-or-not” trust to multiplication; yet the Peng Yu case, the Zhui Feng Xiao Ye case, the Datong engagement-rape case, in-marriage non-paternity, and double-standard mutual harm divide S down again and again — men withdraw for fear of accusation, women demand for fear of being let down; the sexes turn from comrades to opponents. Only when the S multiplier exceeds 1 are interaction costs low and society dares to entrust.
T T · Compound-Interest Engine
Marriage, childbirth, intergenerational transmission are the compound interest of T: first marriages down 55.9% in 9 years, births nearly halved in 10 years, net decrease of 3.39 million in 2025 — time value is being divided to a historic low. The T multiplier amplifies by generation: every young couple that marries multiplies for the consumption, social security, and pensions of 20 years later; every birth is the labor and taxpayer of 18 years later. Once T goes out, E and S have no future outlet — the population is not “calculated” away, it is “divided” away.
7-Layer Depth × Six-Dimension Radar
The 7-Layer Depth Map of Marriage and Love: From “Hormonal Impulse” to “Philosophy of Marriage”
Marriage and love affect the economy and society beyond “marry or not, have kids or not” — they work through 7 layers of depth. The visible layers (information/material/behavior/bodily) solve “information symmetry, affordability, behavioral norms, family-body health”; the middle layer (awareness) solves “feeling and seeing the relationship”; the deepest layers (subconscious/mind) decide “trust in the opposite sex, view of marriage, love and duty” — and this is the deep root of the marriage-and-love collapse: only fixing layers 1–4 (bride-price numbers, dating channels, behavioral rules) while not touching layers 5–7 (trust trauma, fear, mind), double standards, mutual harm, and defense will return in another guise. Value Conservation Methodology assessment model, illustrative, non-sample statistics
| Layer | Corresponding Mechanism in Marriage & Love | Conserved Dimension |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Information Layer | Marriage info asymmetry: bride-price quotes, background checks, dating channels, pre-marital understanding — transparent info reduces the trust collapse of “marry first, know later” | S · Social Value (Transparency) |
| 2. Material Layer | Bride-price, marital home, child cost, family finance — f(m) real-money paying ability (avg bride-price 122,700, total marriage cost 768,000) | E · Economic Value (Money) |
| 3. Behavior Layer | Dating, cohabitation, loyalty, infidelity, consumption — are behaviors reciprocal and voluntary, or one-sided support (simp economy) | E · Economic Value (Behavior) |
| 4. Bodily Layer | Family body: marriage institution, family division of labor, emotional bonds, parent-child — the health of the family's bodily level (only fails when institution and division are unbalanced) | E·T (Economic Value · Time Value) |
| 5. Awareness Layer | Both sides' feeling of the relationship and happiness — the experience of “being seen, being cherished” (behind happiness index 131.5 is emotion fulfilled) | S · Social Value (Experience) |
| 6. Subconscious Layer | Fear of marriage, bias against the opposite sex, family-of-origin trauma, non-paternity shadow — the psychological root of “everyone self-centered, defense everywhere” | Happiness Experience f(h) (Mindset) |
| 7. Mind Layer | View of marriage, love and duty, long-termism — the mind contract from “taking” to “giving” (decides relationship compound interest) | T · Time Value (Mind) |
Six-Dimension Portrait: The Radar of a “Marriage-Healthy” Society
Portray the marriage-and-love society from six dimensions: emotional happiness, institutional trust, consumption vitality, population continuity, gender relations, intergenerational transmission. The weakest now are population continuity (40) and gender relations (46) — T divided to a historic low, double-standard mutual harm eroding trust. Value Conservation Methodology assessment model, illustrative, non-sample statistics
Figure 6 · Marriage-health six-dimension portrait (Value Conservation Methodology assessment model, illustrative): emotional happiness (68) still warm; institutional trust (52), consumption vitality (58), intergenerational transmission (55) clearly strained; population continuity (40) and gender relations (46) weakest — the two “divided down hardest” are precisely the portrait of population decline and mutual harm between the sexes.
Multiplication/Division Overview Table
| Dimension | Conservation Role | Multiplication Track (make E/S/T > 1) | Division Mirror (prevent being divided away) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marriage rate | T · Time Value (Time Multiplier) | Nationwide registration, longer leave (Shanxi/Gansu 30 days), marriage vouchers, curb high bride-prices — make it “affordable to marry” | Avg bride-price 122,700, marriage cost 768,000, first marriages down 55.9% in 9 yrs — “can't afford” means T goes out |
| Divorce rate | S · Social Value (Trust Multiplier) | Divorce cooling-off (2021 civil registrations down ~43%), property division favors innocent — 30-day buffer for impulse | In-marriage common-property arbitrage, marriage fraud, property transfer in cooling-off — “leaving” becomes profitable division |
| Infidelity rate | S·h (Social Value · Happiness Experience) Multiplier | Loyal commitment, intimate communication, relationship repair — f(h) managed into happiness compound interest | Infidelity ~24.4% (media), 58% divorces involve affairs — trust drained |
| Births | T · Time Value (Transmission Multiplier) | Childcare subsidies, universal childcare, education relief, fertility-friendly — make it “affordable and dare to bear” | 2025: 7.92M, TFR ~1.0, net −3.39M — transmission divided off |
| Institution topic | S · Social Value (Institutional Switch) | Good institutions (cooling-off/Art.184/nationwide) make bad people only do good — default trust | Bad institutions/loopholes (property arbitrage, no non-paternity relief) make good people self-protect — default defense |
| Public-opinion topic | S · Social Value (Trust Base) | Judiciary settles disputes, facts before trial — predictable rules lower interaction cost | Trial before verdict, labels before facts — cost of being wronged exceeds cost of wronging, all defend |
| Double-standard topic | S·h (Social Value · Happiness Experience) Mutual Trust | Rights and duties equal, equal rights not privilege — both multiply for each other | Take all rights, shirk all duties — make the marriage cake negative, both starve |
| Emotional Exchange | E · Economic Value (Consumption Engine) | Voluntary fair exchange, transparent services — consumption ignites, tax grows | Simp economy one-sided support, marriage-fraud arbitrage — deformed exchange divided away by market |
The Twin-Blossom Lessons
💑 For the Individual · Become an “Emotion + Finance” Twin Entity
Micro happiness y=f(m)×f(h)×f(t): f(m) is your income and effort (bride-price, marital home, child budget — within your means, don't empty three generations); f(h) is your happiness experience (being seen, cherished, growing together — don't empty the emotional “intimacy account” for bride-price); f(t) is your long-term commitment (loyalty, communication, relationship compound interest). Manage the relationship with 7 layers of depth: information layer — enough pre-marital understanding (background, values, finances); material layer — hold the family financial safety cushion; behavior layer — make effort reciprocal and voluntary (no simping, no PUA); bodily layer — clarify family division and institutions; awareness layer — see each other's emotions and needs; subconscious layer — heal family-of-origin and trust trauma; mind layer — treat “love and duty” as a life contract. Restore f(h) and f(t) to their right places, and many marriage tragedies heal without medicine.
🏛 For Society · Make Marriage and Love an E×S×T Multiplication Project
Stimulating consumption alone cannot build E, and burning money on Qixi cannot save marriage; moral appeals alone cannot build S — double-standard mutual harm and anomie in public opinion need institutions to settle disputes; birth-pushing alone cannot build T — if marriage cost and child pressure don't fall, population won't return. The cure is to grow all three multipliers together: curb high bride-prices and lower marriage cost to make E>1 (consumption re-ignites); divorce cooling-off, good-Samaritan clause, predictable judiciary to make S>1 (trust returns); childcare subsidies, lighter childcare, fertility-friendly to make T>1 (population compound interest). Macro Y=E×S×T — marriage and love are not a “private matter,” but the largest multiplier engine of the economy and society: without emotion there is no reason to consume; let emotion be exchanged voluntarily and fairly, and the economy lives, tax grows, the nation continues.
Take away in one sentence: the collapse of marriage and love is not a victory for any side, but all three multipliers E×S×T divided down together — the marriage rate divides down T, the divorce and infidelity rates divide down S, double-standard mutual harm divides trust negative, non-paternity and arbitrage divide initiative to freezing point, and “without emotion there is no reason to consume” drags E down together. The key to breaking the deadlock is to make institutions the switch of multiplication and division: good institutions make bad people only do good (cooling-off, good-Samaritan clause, nationwide registration, vouchers), bad institutions make good people learn self-protection (property arbitrage, anomie in public opinion, rampant double standards). Let emotion be exchanged voluntarily and fairly — people marry with confidence, dare to have children, willing to pay for love; consumption re-ignites, tax grows again, the nation endures. Multiply or divide — the choice is in the hands of every institutional designer, every opinion participant, every couple.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q1: Can romantic love and marriage really affect the macro economy?
Yes, and it is one of the largest multiplier engines. Macro Y=E×S×T: the marriage rate pulls the whole household-reproduction chain of marital homes, weddings, maternal-and-baby, education (2024 narrow weddings 2.84T, broad ~14.32T); births decide the labor and taxpayers of 18 years later (2025: 7.92M, net −3.39M). Microscopically, married people's happiness index 131.5 is highest of all states, and happy people consume and create more. Conversely, “without emotion there is no reason to consume” — year-on-year Qixi shrinkage, simp-economy collapse, diamond market −27% — all prove E dragged down by S and T. Emotion is not a peripheral topic of economics, but the core of economic and social value.
Q2: Why is it said that “without emotion there is no reason to consume”?
Because much consumption is ritual consumption “paying for love”: Qixi flowers, engagement three-golds, wedding banquets, post-marital maternal-and-baby and education — each justified by emotion. When emotional trust collapses — marriage rate halved, divorce rate high, infidelity rising, double-standard mutual harm — people either dare not enter relationships or won't spend on them. Data proves it: 2025 Qixi flower orders plummeted (−41% to −90%), mall promotion budgets −38%; 2023 diamond market −27%; the 5.8-trillion singles economy is large but mostly self-pleasing consumption that cannot replace household reproduction. Emotion is the igniter of consumption: with the igniter out, the largest engine won't turn.
Q3: Can good institutions really make bad people good?
This is the judgment shared by Deng Xiaoping and North: institutions decide the default of human behavior. Deng said, “A good system prevents bad people from acting arbitrarily; a bad system prevents good people from doing good fully.” North said, “Bad institutions make good people do bad; good institutions make bad people do good.” The proof is in marriage: the divorce cooling-off period cut 2021 civil divorces by about 43% (impulsive divorce divided back to reason by 30 days); Article 184's good-Samaritan clause turned “help-or-not” from a life-and-death torture into a small effort; nationwide registration, longer leave, marriage vouchers make it easier for “those who want to marry.” Conversely, in-marriage common property is alienated into divorce-arbitrage tools, non-paternity birth lacks relief, public opinion tries before verdicts — and good people are forced into self-protectors. Institutions are the switch of multiplication and division — set kindness as the least-effort choice, and even bad people can only do good.
Q4: Why are extreme feminism and gender double standards “division”?
Because the essence of double standards is “take all rights, shirk all duties”: demanding traditional bride-price yet rejecting traditional chastity, claiming modern independence yet not giving up economic dependence, asserting absolute freedom yet accepting no definition. When one side takes only the multiplier and bears none of the divisor, the relationship has only division. Extreme feminism marks men “naturally guilty” and marriage “natural exploitation,” and with the fermentation of individual cases in public opinion, breeds an environment of “everyone self-centered, defense everywhere.” As the circulated observation goes: “she enjoyed this era's openness, freedom, passion, and decadence, yet picked up traditional weapons only when she met you.” Double standards make no side win — they just make the marriage cake negative, and both starve. True equal rights mean rights and duties equal, both multiplying for each other.
Q5: What does “let emotion be voluntary and fair exchange” specifically mean?
It means returning marriage and love to a “transaction” that is mutually voluntary and rule-equal: bride-price has rules (65.42% of respondents accept zero bride-price; the 2026 No. 1 Central Document named high bride-prices for the seventh time and first proposed cross-provincial joint governance); marriage services transparent and trustworthy (online marriage users over 120 million, platform compliance concerns trust); marital contracts with clear rights and duties (common property, parent-child rights, innocent-party relief backed by law). When both sexes enter relationships with confidence, the whole chain of marital homes, weddings, maternal-and-baby, education re-ignites — consumption drives GDP, transactions generate tax, E, S, T rise together, economy and marriage multiply together. Voluntary and fair is the premise for emotional exchange to return from “mutual-harm division” to “coexistence multiplication.”
Q6: Is the root of marriage collapse economic pressure or changing values?
It is the resonance of both, but institutions are the master switch. Economic pressure divides f(m) to the limit: avg bride-price 122,700, total marriage cost 768,000 needing 15 years of saving — ordinary families “can't afford to marry”; changing values divide f(h) and S down: extreme feminism, double-standard mutual harm, non-paternity trust crisis, public opinion trying before verdict — making people “dare not trust.” The two reinforce each other — the greater the economic pressure, the easier to treat marriage as calculation; the lower the trust, the less dare to invest in love. The key to breaking the deadlock is in institutions: lower marriage cost (E), rebuild trust rules (S), solidify population compound interest (T), all three multipliers return above 1 together, and marriage returns from “actuarial burden” to “happiness compound interest.” The root cure is to fix both the economic ledger and the trust ledger.
Sources and References
[1] Ministry of Civil Affairs · 2024 Civil Affairs Development Statistical Bulletin — authoritative data such as 6.106M marriages, 3.513M divorces, MCA · 2024 Statistical Bulletin
[2] China.org.cn · 2025 national marriages 6.763M (2026-02-12) — up 10.76% YoY, China.org.cn · 2025 Marriages
[3] The Beijing News · first-half 2026 national marriages 3.275M — down 7.46% YoY, The Beijing News · First-Half 2026 Marriages
[4] National Bureau of Statistics · 2025 Statistical Bulletin on National Economic and Social Development — births 7.92M, total population 1,404.89M, natural growth −2.41‰, NBS · 2025 Statistical Bulletin
[5] NBS Wang Pingping · 2025 population data interpretation (2026-01) — authoritative reading of births, fertility, population structure, NBS · Population Interpretation
[6] Yicai · 2025 marriage registrations up 10.76% (2026-02) — nationwide registration and double-spring-year factors, Yicai · Marriage Rebound
[7] Legal Daily · Datong engagement-rape case second instance upheld (2025-04-16) — judicial facts, Legal Daily · Datong Case 2nd Instance
[8] Sina · Zhui Feng Xiao Ye case retrial rejected (2026) — Chengdu metro “shoe-reflection secret-photography” case judicial process, Sina · Zhui Feng Xiao Ye Case
[9] Baike · Peng Yu case — the 2006 Nanjing “help-elderly-yet-compensate” case and its public-opinion impact, Baike · Peng Yu Case
[10] Nobel Prize official site · 1992 Economics prize press release — Gary Becker's A Treatise on the Family and family economics, Nobel Prize site · Becker's Family Treatise
[11] Posts & Telecom Press · Rowland Miller's Intimate Relationships 8th ed. (2026-01) — science-of-intimacy textbook, Posts & Telecom Press · Intimate Relationships
[12] Fudan Journal · Zou Shipeng's Institutional Civilization and Virtue Reconstruction — source of Deng Xiaoping's “good/bad system” statement, Fudan Journal · Institutional Civilization
[13] Xinhua · first year of divorce cooling-off saw divorces plummet (2021-06) — effect of Civil Code Art. 1077, Xinhua · Divorce Cooling-Off
[14] The Paper · China Economic Life Survey — those with partners and married happier than singles, The Paper · Economic Life Survey
Note: data marked “illustrative” are illustrative expressions of the Value Conservation Methodology assessment model, not sample statistics; data marked “media/survey relay” (infidelity ~24.4%, avg bride-price 122,700, marriage cost 768,000, singles economy 5.8T, paternity non-biological rate, etc.) come from media and survey relays with differing calibers and clear sample bias, for reference only; objective macro data (marriages, divorces, births) all come from official bulletins such as the MCA and NBS. Also: bibliographic info for Becker's A Treatise on the Family, Miller's Intimate Relationships, Fromm's The Art of Loving, North's Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, Harari's Sapiens, etc. is in Section VIII's booklist; laws and objective data are subject to the latest official releases.