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China's Working-Age Population to Dramatically Shrink
Confirmed
In Short: China's working-age population is set to dramatically shrink due to the one-child policy, aging population, and low fertility rates.
China's working-age population is set to dramatically shrink over the coming decades, driven by the lagged effects of the one-child policy, an aging population, and a significant decline in fertility rates, which currently stand at 1.09 births per woman, far below the 2.1 needed to maintain population size.
According to Apollo Academy and The Conversation, this downturn will be long-lasting, even if it is followed by a temporary rebound in births, bringing forward the day the world’s population peaks and starts to shrink.
The Conversation notes that unlike the temporary effects of the famine, this demographic shift will have lasting implications for global population trends.
Newsweek highlights the possibility that China's population could shrink to just 320 million by 2100, a figure that seems absurdly low but becomes more plausible when considering the average human lifespan of about 80 years.
The Indian Express reports that across advanced economies, declining fertility rates, aging populations, and shrinking workforces are creating structural labor shortages that curtail economic growth.
In Beijing, a resident told the BBC in 2021 that having children sounds exhausting, with parents obsessed about getting the best nanny or enrolling kids in the best schools.
More recently, China has offered parents 3,600 yuan (£375; $500) per each of their children under the age of three.
The number of births per thousand people slid from 7.52 to 6.77, according to The Conversation.
Newsweek's China Decoded publication explores the possibility of China's population shrinking to just 320 million by 2100, a figure that seems absurdly low but becomes more plausible when considering the average human lifespan of about 80 years.
This demographic shift has implications for global population trends and economic growth, as shrinking workforces create structural labor shortages.
China's efforts to boost fertility rates, such as offering financial incentives, may help, but the long-term trend of a shrinking population remains.
What this adds
Newsweek's China Decoded publication explores the possibility of China's population shrinking to just 320 million by 2100, a figure that seems absurdly low but becomes more plausible when considering the average human lifespan of about 80 years.
Background
Newsweek's China Decoded publication explores the possibility of China's population shrinking to just 320 million by 2100, a figure that seems absurdly low but becomes more plausible when considering the average human lifespan of about 80 years.
What's confirmed
- China’s working-age population will shrink dramatically over the coming decades, driven by the lagged effects of the one-child policy, an aging population, and a significant decline in fertility rates—which currently stand at 1.09 births per woman, far below the 2.1 needed to maintain population size.
- Unlike the famine, whose effects were temporary, and followed by steady population growth, this downturn will be long-lasting, even if it is followed by a temporary rebound in births, bringing forward the day the world’s population peaks and starts to shrink.
- Read more: China’s population is about to shrink for the first time since the great famine struck 60 years ago.
- This means that even as it shrinks, how fast it shrinks has implications for when the globe’s population starts to shrink.
What's still developing
- After all, aren’t there 1.4 billion Chinese today?
- None of this can be built without confronting an uncomfortable reality: Political appetite for migration is shrinking in the economies that need workers most.
- Sadler highlights the strain of the USS Abraham Lincoln's 250-day deployment as a key symptom of a shrinking fleet.
- Below, for Newsweek Members, we are reproducing the latest edition of China Decoded in full: Could there really be just 320 million Chinese by 2100?
- It says it has “the support of independent Chinese intellectuals, scholars, and readers worldwide,” and “has remained committed to liberal values and to the defense of freedom of speech and expression in the Chinese-speaking world.” It’s edited and published in New York by Bouden House, a Chinese-language literary press that was established in 2018.
- Not even the former Premier Li Keqiang, who earlier in his career as party secretary of Liaoning province, said that the government’s GDP number was “man-made” and that he studied practical things like electricity consumption to gauge real growth.
- “It's declining grades at existing operations. It's tired, very, very old assets,” BlackRock's Evy Hambro said of the sector last month.
- “Everyone is investing in copper, everyone likes copper,” Anglo American's Ruben Fernandes said.
- It sounds absurdly low, but when you think that a person only lives for about 80 years, meaning that shrinkage can occur fast, it begins perhaps to make sense.