China’s population started shrinking in 2022 for the first time in six decades, a milestone for the world’s second-largest economy, which is facing an increasingly serious demographic crisis
by slowing demand for goods such as new houses. Due to the decline, the Chinese economy may struggle to overtake the US in size and the nation could lose its status as the world’s most populous country to India this year.
As recently as 2019, the United Nations was forecasting that China’s population would peak in 2031 and then decline, but last year the UN had revised that estimate to see a peak at the start of 2022. The labor force is already shrinking, long-term demand for houses will fall likely further, and the government may also struggle to pay for its underfunded national pension system.
The country is following in the footsteps of other nations in East Asia such as Japan or South Korea, which have seen their birth rates plummet and populations age and start to shrink as they’ve become wealthier and developed. China’s birth rate, or the number of newborns per 1,000 people, declined to 6.77 last year, the lowest level since at least 1978.
The data released by the National Statistics Bureau show 62% of the population were of working-age, which China defines as people aged 16 to 59, down from
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