Abstract: With the data from “2006 Chinese Social Survey”(CGSS2006),this paper investigates the change trend in the age of first marriage and its socioeconomic origins using the event history analysis model. Education, occupation and family socioeconomic status are found to be significantly related to the age of first marriage, with considerable differences between men and women, and between urban and rural residential registration. First, higher education, in general, is associated with later marriage; more so for women than for men, with this effect being the strongest for the women in the rural areas. Second, among the men who have rural registration (hukou), those in professional occupations marry earlier than those with nonskilled, non managerial jobs. Third, in the urban population, the higher the parents’ education attainment is, the later their children get married for the first time but the number of siblings correlates with an earlier marriage. Lastly, regardless of hukou location (urban or rural), father’s managerial position, in contrast to having a skilled job, is associated with his child’s earlier marriage. Father’s managerial position is associated with his son’s younger age of first marriage, especially so if their hukou is in the rural areas. Taken together, these findings answer to the marriage hypothesis from the modernization theory, that is, an individual’s education, occupation and family socioeconomic status all significantly affect the age of first marriage; but in the rural areas where traditional characteristics are more prominent, existing differences in fathers’ occupations have a more substantial impact on their children’s age of first marriage. Therefore, age of first marriage is not only a matter of an individual’s choice, but also closely relates to macrolevel factors such as social stratification, the hukou system, and the urbanrural structure.