China’s births fell to their lowest in almost six decades amid the coronavirus pandemic last year, putting the country’s population on course to peak within the next five years and adding pressure on Beijing to step up reforms to maintain economic growth as the workforce shrinks.
Over the past 10 years, China’s population increased by 72 million to 1.411 billion, the National Bureau of Statistics announced after a once-a-decade census. But annual growth averaged 0.53 percent, a decrease of .04 percent from the previous decade. The annual average population growth of 0.53% in the past decade was the slowest since the 1950s.
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The working population in China — people aged 15 to 59 — is declining after reaching a peak of 925 million in 2011.
According to new figures, the country’s workforce population is now three-quarters of the amount of its 2011 high.
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“We are more concerned about the fast decline in the working-age population,” said Lu Jiehua, a professor of population studies at Peking University.
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“If the population gets too old, it will be impossible to solve the problem through immigration,” said Lu. “It needs to be dealt with at an early stage.”
China’s population has become much more urbanized and educated over the past decade, trends which should allow the world’s second-largest economy to continue expanding even after its population peaks. In order to remain an engine of world growth, China will require a large increase in spending on pensions and health care and more investment in education and infrastructure to boost productivity.
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Slower growth in the population means it could peak before 2025, according to estimates from Bloomberg Economics. Demographers generally predict that China will be overtaken by India as the world’s most populous nation sometime over the next decade, though China’s economy will remain larger as its workers are more productive.
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Even though China rapidly contained the coronavirus outbreak and the economy returned to growth last year, its fertility mirrored other major nations such as the U.S., which saw births slump as economic and social dislocation undercut people’s desire to have children.
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The share of the working population -- those in the ages of 15 and 59 -- slumped to 63.4% in 2020 from more than 70% a decade ago, according to the census. Residents aged 60 and above accounted for 18.7% of the population in 2020, up from 13.3% in 2010.
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The ruling Communist Party has been planning for a peak in the population since the 1970s when the country’s fertility rates started to decline due to rising incomes and policies restricting births.
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In the last census released in 2011, China was declaring victory over rapid population growth, long seen as a threat to the country’s ability to meet its own needs in products like rice and corn. But the slowdown in the population has been faster than officials expected.
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