China's population continued its decline for a third consecutive year in 2024, despite a modest increase in births. The country's population fell by 1.39 million, reaching 1.408 billion at year-end. This shrinking population poses a significant challenge to China's long-term economic growth.
China ’s population shrank for a third year in a row in 2024, even as the country saw an increase in births, the decline representing a major long-term challenge to the country’s economic growth .
Beijing rolled out a series of measures in the second half of the year, including a stimulus package worth about $US1 trillion, but many economists have remained sceptical about the country’s longer-term economic outlook as it continues to be weighed down by the property market collapse. China’s fertility rate is hovering around one birth per woman, well below the 2.1 replacement rate needed for population growth, leading experts to forecast that its decline will continue for many decades.Dr Xiujian Peng, a senior research fellow specialising in China’s demography at Victoria University, said once the fertility rate dipped below 2.1 it was very difficult for countries to reverse the trend.
Dr Fuxian Yi, a demographer and an obstetrician at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the increase in births in 2024 was temporary and could be attributed to the long tail of the Chinese government’s Zero-COVID policy that led some people to delay marriage and childbearing.
Population Decline China Economic Growth Demographics Fertility Rate
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