Abstract: Along with the social impact and consequences of gender imbalance appearing gradually, elder unmarried male youths are faced with the marriage dilemma in poor rural areas, and it seems to have become an unavoidable reality problem. This study selected S country of Henan province as the research area, conducted field interviews for more than twenty elder unmarried male youths who are in this village, and it was found that: in this country, the phenomenon that elder unmarried male youth get together is obvious, facing serious mate scramble; marriage comparisons are very popular, and high marriage payment is more common; many youths suffer the repeated failure of blind date, and bear the greater stress of spirit; the long term elder unmarried greatly reduces the criterion of mate selection. The causes that many elder unmarried male youths appear in this village mainly focus on the geographical environment, family economic conditions, their cultural level and the traditional concept of rural areas etc. Therefore, we need to start from several aspects such as speeding up the construction of rural economy, developing traffic industry, improving the comprehensive skills of youth, balancing the proportion of men and women, and strengthening psychological counseling of youth, in order to alleviate the mate choice problem of elder unmarried male youth in rural areas.

Key words: social relationship, social problem, poor rural marriage, elder unmarried youth, mate selection