(ECNS) -- Sixty-seven percent of respondents to a survey said they would prefer to have a second child as China scaled back its decades-old one-child policy last week, allowing all couples across the country to have a second child, Beijing Morning Post reports.
Zhenai.com, one of the country's leading matchmaking websites, surveyed its unmarried members to gauge their eventual willingness to have two children, finding that more than two-thirds of respondents said they would have another kid.
One common assumption is that people with less education prefer to have more children, but that was not the case, said the report. Higher income and education are factors boosting the desire to eventually have a second child, it found.
The report showed that 58.6 percent of respondents with bachelor degrees or above would like to have two children, while 70.8 percent of single men with a monthly income of more than 20,000 yuan ($3,065) have a strong interest in having a second kid.
The survey also found a significant number of respondents advocate delayed marriage and later childbearing. Ninety-seven percent prefer to get married after 25 years old; 45 percent of female respondents would like to have children when they are between 30 and 35 years; and 35 percent of female respondents do not mind being older mothers and having a second child after they turn 35.
The results also showed that the vast majority of respondents prefer marriage to single life. Only 2.9 percent said they enjoy single life, while 45.9 percent said they felt very lonely.
The report also showed that 66.7 percent of respondents feel pressure to marry against their will, especially in first-tier cities.
"Every time I come home on holiday, my parents try rush me into a marriage," said one respondent. "I just lower my head and say nothing."
There are other signs of yearning: 21.23 percent of those surveyed said they long for marriage because they do not want to miss out on the optimal age for proposing, while another 38.82 percent feel lonely and want somebody around.
Along with traditional dating and social networking, online dating websites are becoming a more common way to meet in the Internet age and claim a high success rate in matchmaking.
