BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s census, once a decade, is expected to show a further drop in the percentage of young people in its rapidly aging population as high living costs and aversion to having children between urban couples make China approach crunch demographics.
Policymakers are under pressure to introduce family planning incentives and halt a declining birth rate, with the world’s most populous country at risk of entering an irreversible population slump if no effective measures are found.
China is expected to publish the results of its latest census, conducted in late 2020, in the coming days. It is believed that the proportion of elderly people in the population has increased, but the data on their breeding will be more significant.
In 2010, the proportion of the population aged 14 and under plummeted to 16.60%, from 22.89% in 2000, as a result of a one-child policy of decades. Citizens aged 60 and over accounted for 13.26%, compared to 10%.
Continuing these trends will undermine China’s working-age population and weigh on productivity. A shrinking group of working adults will also test their ability to pay for and care for an aging nation.
In 2016, China rejected the one-child policy in hopes of increasing the number of babies. A target was also set to increase its population to about 1.44 billion in 2020, from 1.34 billion in 2010.
But the birth rate has continued to decline.
This is due, in part, to the fact that urban couples, despite parental pressure to have babies, value their independence and career more than raising a family.
Yu Tao, 31, a product designer based in Beijing for a major technology company, said he was reluctant to make the sacrifice in terms of time he would have to make if he and his wife had a baby.
As it is, he usually gets home from work at midnight, at the earliest.
“I like my balance right now, how I balance my work and my personal life, and I think I still can’t be in that good balance once I have a child,” Yu said.
IRREVERSIBLE SLIDE?
Yu and his wife have a combined income of more than 700,000 yuan ($ 106,888) a year, but said they did not feel financially secure enough to have a child, even though they earn considerably more than an average household.
Annual per capita disposable urban income was 43,834 yuan in 2020 compared to 19,109 yuan in 2010, according to official data.
“We are not prepared for a child both financially and mentally,” Yu said.
The rising cost of living in big cities, a major source of babies due to their huge population, has also caused couples to withdraw from their children, especially the costs of housing.
Among urban households, annual per capita spending on housing rose to 6,958 yuan in 2020 from 1,332 yuan in 2010, according to official data, more than five.
“If the government simply allows people to have children without political support, it is unlikely to have a big impact,” said Liu Kaiming, a social and labor expert.
“In general, the case that people are reluctant to have children or have fewer of them is irreversible.”
State media have been making increasingly terrible predictions, saying the population may begin to shrink in the coming years: a gloomier forecast than the United Nations, which predicts a population peak in 2030, and then a descent.
In 2016, China set a target in 2020 that its fertility rate would be about 1.8 children per woman, between 1.5 and 1.6 in 2015.
If the rate drops below 1.5, many demographers say China is unlikely to ever get out of the so-called fertility trap.
Recent comments from the Minister of Civil Affairs that the fertility rate had already exceeded a “warning line” and that the population had entered a critical period of transition went viral on social media.
(1 $ = 6,5489 Chinese yuan renminbi)
Ryan Woo Reports; Additional reports by Liangping Gao, Lusha Zhang and Beijing Drafting; Edited by Robert Birsel