China’s population decline is accelerating and the birth rate is at a record low for the second year in a row.
China’s total population will decline by 2.75 million people, or 0.2%, to 1.49 billion in 2023, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday. This decline exceeds the approximately 850,000 people recorded in 2022, and is the first recorded population decline since mass starvation deaths during the Mao Zedong era.
The total number of deaths in 2023 increased by 6.6% to 11.1 million, bringing the mortality rate to its highest level since the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution in 1974. At the same time, the number of births decreased by 5.7% to 9.02 million. The birth rate was the lowest ever at 6.39 children per 1,000 people, down from 6.77 children in 2022.
China has long struggled with an aging population and a growing reluctance among young people to have children due to past population control policies, including the one-child policy. According to United Nations estimates, India will be overtaken by India as the world’s most populous country in 2023.
Chinese authorities are concerned about the economic impact of this “demographic time bomb,” with rising costs of elderly care and financial support at risk of being overwhelmed by fewer working taxpayers. The state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences predicts that the pension system in its current form will run out of funding by 2035. By then, China’s population over 60 years old (the country’s retirement age) will have grown from about 280 million people. Up to 400 million.
Many policies fail to encourage people to have more children or are not properly implemented by local governments. Local governments are suffering from budget shortfalls after years of running resource-intensive zero-corona systems.
People often cite the high cost of living in China, especially in big cities, and the lack of support for women’s jobs as reasons for not having children. Traditional gender roles and family expectations also contribute.
He Dan, director of the China Population and Development Research Center, told the state media Global Times, “Cities have announced many policies to support childbirth for expectant women, but they are still not meeting people’s expectations. No,” he said.
On Tuesday, demographers proposed further reforms to birth support policies, the Global Times reported. Others expressed hope that a post-pandemic baby boom could result in more babies being born in 2024, and that people are hoping to have children in the Year of the Dragon, which begins in February. .
Online, some Chinese Weibo users anecdotally noted that there were more pregnancies around them and associated them with the year of the zodiac.
Others were more skeptical, saying a one-year baby boom would make life difficult for children who would later take China’s highly competitive university entrance exams.
Some discussions suggested that new policies or a lucky year would do little to change their minds. “It’s because I love myself more. I know that if I were born into a family without the ability to raise and educate children, I would suffer more and would not be able to experience the joys of life.” “It’s about ending the suffering of my generation,” said one commentator.
Reuters contributed to this report