Worrying trend: Parents accompanying children as they play in a park in Fuyang. After six decades of growth, the country is facing a drop in birth rates despite the lifting of the ‘one-child policy’ in 2021. — AFP
Authorities here said its population fell for the third year running in 2024, extending a downward streak after more than six decades of growth as the country faces a rapidly ageing population and persistently low birth rates.
Once the world’s most populous country, China was overtaken by India in 2023, with Beijing seeking to boost falling birth rates through subsidies and pro-fertility propaganda.
The population stood at 1.408 billion by the end of the year, Beijing’s National Bureau of Statistics said, down from 1.410 billion in 2023.
The decline was less sharp than the previous year, when it was more than double the fall reported for 2022, data showed.
China ended its strict “one-child policy”, imposed in the 1980s over overpopulation fears, in 2016 and started letting couples have three children in 2021.
But that has failed to reverse the demographic decline for a country that has long relied on its vast workforce as a driver of economic growth.
Many say falling birth rates are due to the soaring cost of living, as well as the growing number of women going into the workforce and seeking higher education.
Population decline is likely to continue due to gloomy economic prospects for young people and as Chinese women “confront entrenched labour market gender discriminations”, Yun Zhou, a sociologist at the University of Michigan said.
People over 60 are expected to make up nearly a third of China’s population by 2035, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, a research group.
Data released yesterday showed that the population aged 60 and over reached 310.31 million – just a few percentage points short of a quarter of the country and an increase from nearly 297 million recorded in 2023.
However, the data also showed China’s birth rate – among the lowest in the world – ticked up slightly from the previous year to 6.77 per 1,000 people.
“This uptick is unlikely to last, as the population of childbearing-age women is projected to decline sharply in the coming decades,” said Zhao Litao, a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s East Asian Institute. — AFP
