Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Could China’s population start falling?
According to Worldometer elaboration of the latest United Nations data, the current population of China is about 1.45 billion as of June 4, which represents approximately 18.4% of the projected world population. It is still the world’s most populous country, but its population increased by fewer than 500,000 last year, the lowest increase in decades. China’s total fertility rate, or births per woman, has been declining, from 2.6 in the late 1980s, to 1.6 in 1994, and down to 1.15 in 2021. To maintain the population, a fertility rate of 2.1 is needed, provided that the sex ratio is in line with the average, 106 boys for every 100 girls. However, China has much fewer women of child-bearing age than the average because boys were preferred during the one-child policy period between 1980 and 2015, which was taken place to curb the rapidly increasing population. The declining fertility rate is quite common, especially in eastern Asian countries like China, South Korea, and Japan, where women get married later and are less motivated to have children as they are more educated and develop their own careers. So, China is expected to start losing its population earlier than projected. Also, as fewer children are born, the country will age more rapidly than previously thought. Will the nation be able to keep the economic growth and sustain the increasing pension cost? The fall of Japan’s economic status didn’t affect other countries so much even though it had been the second-largest economy until around 2009, but China’s impact is much larger because of the scale.
Enjoy reading the article and learning what China’s population decrease means to the world.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220531-why-chinas-population-is-shrinking
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