The World Bank projects China will fall by 80 million people in the next 25 years, similar to the population of Germany. This forecasted drop in population is a direct result of declining birth rates. Despite China lifting the "one-child" policy in 2016, birth rates continue to fall today.
China's population decline can be traced back to the restrictive family-planning policies launched in the 1970s and an impressive economic boom fueled by China's huge labor force. China's modernization brought rapid urbanization, rising income levels, and better education to large parts of the country.
China recorded its first population drop in six decades in 2022, and in 2023, it is reported to have lost the title of “world's most populous country” to India. By 2050, China's population is expected to fall to around 1.32 billion, while India's will have hit 1.67 billion, according to the United Nations.
Despite the rollback of China's one-child policy, and even after more recent incentives urging families to have more children, China's population is steadily shrinking — a momentous shift that will soon leave India as the world's most-populous nation and have broad rippling effects both domestically and globally.
According to data published Tuesday by the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the population of mainland China was 1.411 billion people at the end of 2022, a decrease of 850,000 over the previous year.
India to overtake China as world's most populous country in April 2023, United Nations projects.
China's economy is set to rebound this year as mobility and activity pick up after the lifting of pandemic restrictions, providing a boost to the global economy. The economy will expand 5.2 percent this year, according to our latest projections, versus 3 percent last year.
Russia may be different. Its population is falling unusually fast and may drop to 130m by mid-century. The decline is associated with increased misery: the life expectancy at birth of Russian males plummeted from 68.8 in 2019 to 64.2 in 2021, partly because of covid, partly from alcohol-related disease.
China is forecast to lose almost half of its people by 2100, plunging from more than 1.4 billion to 771 million inhabitants. Russia, Germany, South Korea and Spain are all set to join this downward movement, with their populations beginning to decline by 2030.
Busy urban lifestyles and long working hours leave little time for some Japanese to start families, and the rising costs of living that mean having a baby is simply too expensive for many young people.
According to the UN's World Population Prospects report for 2022, China's population was predicted to decline in 2023 – the reduction recently revealed by the country's census had been expected for some time.
After peaking in 2008, Japan's population has since shrunk steadily due to a declining birthrate. The country saw a record low of 771,801 births last year.
The country's National Bureau of Statistics reported a drop of roughly 850,000 people for a population of 1.41175 billion in 2022, marking the first decline since 1961, the last year of China's Great Famine. That possibly makes India the world's most populous nation.
Instead, halfway through 2023, it's facing a confluence of problems: Sluggish consumer spending, a crisis-ridden property market, flagging exports, record youth unemployment and towering local government debt.
For years, the census data in China has recorded a significant imbalance sex ratio toward the male population, meaning there are fewer women than men. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as the missing women or missing girls of China. In 2021, the male-to-female ratio of China is recorded at 104.61 to 100.
What is the one-child policy? The one-child policy was a program in China that limited most Chinese families to one child each. It was implemented nationwide by the Chinese government in 1980, and it ended in 2016.
Demographers have marked Musk's words—but they don't agree with his dire predictions. “With 8 billion people and counting on the earth, we don't see a collapse happening at present time, and it's not even projected,” says Tomas Sobotka at the Vienna Institute of Demography.
Until a small, covid-induced decline last year, the German population rose steadily over the 2010s, reaching a record 83.2m in 2019. This was the result of high net immigration, running at an annual average of 400,000, mainly from southern and eastern Europe.
Birth rate highs and lows
On the other side of the scale, the CIA estimates Monaco has the lowest birth rate in the world at 6.63 average annual births per 1,000 people per year.
Rajah last year projected that while China would become the world's biggest economy by 2030, “its size advantage over America would be slim and it would remain far less prosperous and productive per person than the United States and other rich countries, even by mid-century.” The Japan Center for Economic Research, ...
A major lender abroad, China is facing a debt bomb at home: trillions of dollars owed by local governments, their financial affiliates, and real estate developers.
China's $23 Trillion Local Debt Mess Is About to Get Worse. What happened in cash-strapped Hegang points to a long economic slog for the rest of the country.