Youth Refraining from Marriage In Saudi Arabia and Its Devastating Consequences
Youth Refraining from Marriage in Saudi Arabia and Its Devastating Consequences
Saudi Arabia is undergoing profound demographic, economic, and social transformations. One of the most painful outcomes is the catastrophic rate of youth abstention from marriage. This is a direct result of the current regime’s policies, which have destroyed the future of young men and women. Development, instead of being a tool to empower citizens, has turned them into victims of policies that marginalized the nation’s youth. These policies opened the floodgates to foreign labor while excluding citizens from the job market. Even when a job opportunity arises, it is often temporary and low-paying, offering neither dignity nor stability.
Securing a decent job is no longer easy. It has become dependent on connections, and even those are no longer sufficient to find employment as they once were. Government and private sector jobs are saturated. The government has failed to innovate solutions to create new opportunities, such as investing the country’s wealth domestically rather than abroad.
Citizen welfare has declined. Unemployment among university graduates and skilled individuals has risen, leading to marginalization and a dangerous deterioration in quality of life. Taxes, fees, rising fuel and electricity prices, and general inflation have eroded the ability of youth and families to cope with living costs. Prices have reached unprecedented levels. Housing costs have doubled. Social support has been reduced to symbolic programs that neither nourish nor sustain. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman literally uses these programs to patronize the people with crumbs. Meanwhile, he monopolizes the lion’s share and squanders much of the country’s revenues and savings to satisfy his personal desires. He acquires the most expensive assets in the world and builds palaces, including his latest in NEOM, which is a complex of palaces rather than a single one. The citizen’s daily life has become a struggle for survival.
Statistics indicate that 73.7% of Saudi youth and 56% of young women are unmarried. These figures reveal the depth of the crisis created by these failed policies. Marriage, once a pillar of stability, social cohesion, and a source of national economic strength through the workforce, has become a distant dream. It is attainable only by the wealthy or royal elites from the House of Saud and their entourage. The general youth population suffers under the burden of inflation, unemployment, and an uncertain future. This is compounded by the squandering of national wealth on massive, unfeasible projects that have become black holes devouring state resources. Spending abroad to polish the image of the Crown Prince through failed investments and events that have no relevance to the citizen and offer no economic benefit has become common. Nothing returns to the citizen from spending over 100 million riyals on a boxing match in Las Vegas or similar events that waste public funds without real returns. These events have no connection to economic development, investment, or even meaningful entertainment for the people. This recklessness proves the Crown Prince’s disregard for the nation’s wealth, the suffering of its people, and the future of its youth, welfare, economy, and resources.
This disaster goes beyond the family unit. It threatens the future of the country itself. Rising rates of marriage avoidance mean declining birth rates, demographic stagnation, and a shrinking national workforce. This will make the economy increasingly dependent on foreign labor and weaken national productivity. The shrinking of Saudi families also means reduced domestic demand and stagnation in markets tied to new households, such as real estate, furniture, education, and travel. This creates an internal economic recession.
Socially, delayed family formation and the diminishing role of marriage create a vacuum in values and upbringing. They increase youth isolation and depression and undermine the social cohesion that has long characterized Saudi society. The family is not merely a relationship between a man and a woman. It is the backbone of society. Its weakness means the weakening of the entire nation.
It has become clear to all that this disaster, and others that have befallen the citizen, destroying their welfare, dreams, and aspirations, and crushing the quality of life they once enjoyed, is the result of the economic and social policies adopted by the current regime without a realistic vision for the citizen’s future. Instead of building a vision based on empowering Saudis, it was built on expanding reliance on foreigners, raising taxes, lifting subsidies on fuel and electricity, and imposing high tariffs on imported food. These were accompanied by programs and projects that have nothing to do with development. They serve only to fulfill the childish fantasies of a Crown Prince desperate to impress the world, not his own people.
The Crown Prince has been the most vocal about improving quality of life in the country. In reality, he has worked to destroy it. People see the impact of his destructive policies in the decline of citizen welfare, the erosion of the middle class, even the wealthy and business owners, and the spread of poverty among youth, the sick, and the elderly.
Unless these policies are radically changed and dignity and fair opportunities are restored to the youth, the Kingdom is heading toward a future where the number of citizens declines. This will result in a severe shortage in the national workforce and a gradual erosion of the foundations of development and stability. Investing in the citizen, their welfare, and improving their quality of life is the true investment upon which nations are built. The current practices of exclusion, marginalization, and squandering of potential represent a toxic and chaotic formula that threatens to collapse Saudi Arabia’s social and economic balance. This poses a direct and escalating danger to the nation’s future, its global standing, and its very existence.
