China’s population has declined for the second consecutive year.
According to a report by the National Bureau of Statistics, there will be only 9.02 million births in 2023, which is only half the number in 2017. Comparing this with the number of deaths in China in 2023 of 11.1 million people (an increase of 500,000 people compared to 2022), China’s population will have decreased by 850,000 people in 2022 and then 2.08 million people in 2023. . This is a loss of approximately 3 million yen in two years.
This is the first time since the Great Famine of 1959-1961 that there has been a decline for two consecutive years, and the trend is accelerating.
China’s population will shrink from the current 1.4 billion to just 525 million by 2100, according to the latest forecast from a research team at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, which was among the first to predict a recession in 2022.
China’s working-age population is projected to fall to just 210 million by 2100, just one-fifth of its 2014 peak.
While the number of births is decreasing, the number of deaths is increasing
Mortality rates are rising as an inevitable consequence of an aging population, and coronavirus cases are surging in the first months of 2023.
The aging of the population is mainly due to a decline in the birth rate.
Under China’s one-child policy, the total fertility rate, which is the average number of births per woman, remained roughly unchanged at approximately 1.66 from 1991 to 2017. However, it has since declined to 1.28 in 2020 and 1.08 in 2022, and is currently around 1, far below the 2.1 level generally considered necessary to maintain the population.
For comparison, Australia and the United States have a birth rate of 1.6. South Korea’s interest rate in 2023 is 0.72, the lowest in the world.
Despite the three-child policy, the number of births has fallen sharply
China abandoned its one-child policy in 2016. In 2021, it introduced a three-child policy backed by tax and other incentives.
However, the number of births continues to decline. This is partly due to the established one-child norm, partly because the one-child policy reduced the number of women of childbearing age, and partly because economic pressures have made raising children less attractive. This is due to fading.
According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, employees work an average of 49 hours a week and more than nine hours a day. Female graduates earn less than their male counterparts and are more likely to postpone childbearing.
Read more: China’s population is currently declining inexorably, and the day when the Earth’s population declines is nearing
The Year of the Dragon brings hope
2024 is the year of the Dragon, a symbol of good fortune in Chinese astrology, and one of the hopes is that the number of births will increase.
Some families may have chosen to postpone childbirth to the less auspicious Year of the Rabbit in 2023. At least one study of hers has confirmed such effects.
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Population aging and increasing dependence
The same research team from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and Australia’s Victoria University Center for Policy Research predicts that China’s population will fall by more than half to about 525 million by 2100, a decline that is faster than previously predicted. It was about 62 million people.
The working-age population is expected to decline even more rapidly to 210 million people.
The number of Chinese people aged 65 and over is now expected to overtake the number of traditional working-age Chinese people by 2077, three years earlier than before.
By 2100, it is predicted that for every 100 traditional Chinese people of working age, 137 older Chinese people will have to be supported, up from just 21 today.
Our central scenario assumes that China’s birth rate will recover and slowly rise to 1.3. Our low scenario assumes a further decline to 0.88 over the next decade, followed by a gradual recovery to 1.0 by 2050, followed by stabilization.
We base our assumptions on observations of the actual total fertility rate and its downward trend in the China region. In 2022, these interest rates reached 1.26 in Japan, 1.04 in Singapore, 0.87 in Taiwan, 0.8 in Hong Kong, and 0.78 in South Korea.
Despite government efforts, none of these countries has seen a recovery in birth rates. These trends point to what demographers call the “low-fertility trap,” in which fertility rates become difficult to raise once they fall below 1.5 or 1.4.
World population peaks earlier
China currently accounts for one-sixth of the world’s population, and as its population declines at an accelerating pace, the world’s population will reach its peak sooner.
Our latest projections for China put the world’s population at its peak by one year earlier, by 2083, but there are many uncertainties (fertility has fallen below replacement level; ).
Accelerating China’s population decline will weaken the Chinese economy and, through it, the global economy.
There will be downward pressure on Chinese consumer spending, and upward pressure on wages and government spending. As the world’s second-largest economy, this weakness will pose a challenge for global economic recovery.