As China’s population continues to plummet, demographic alarms are ringing

China’s population fell last year for the third straight year, its government said Jan. 17, pointing to further demographic challenges for the world’s second most populous nation, which is now facing both an aging population and an emerging shortage of working age people.

China’s population stood at 1.408 billion at the end of 2024, a decline of 1.39 million from the previous year.

The figures announced by the government in Beijing follow trends worldwide, but especially in East Asia, where Japan, South Korea, and other nations have seen their birth rates plummet. China three years ago joined Japan and most of Eastern Europe among other nations whose population is falling.

The reasons are in many cases similar: Rising costs of living are causing young people to put off or rule out marriage and childbirth while pursuing higher education and careers. While people are living longer, that’s not enough to keep up with the rate of new births.

Countries such as China that allow very little immigration are especially at risk.

China has long been among the world’s most populous nations, enduring invasions, floods, and other natural disasters to sustain a population that thrived on rice in the south and wheat in the north. Following the end of World War II and the Communist Party’s rise to power in 1949, large families reemerged and the population doubled in just three decades, even after tens of millions died in the Great Leap Forward that sought to revolutionize agriculture and industry and the Cultural Revolution that followed a few years later.

After the end of the Cultural Revolution and leader Mao Zedong’s death, Communist bureaucrats began to worry the country’s population was outstripping its ability to feed itself and began implementing a draconian “one child policy.” Though it was never law, women had to apply for permission to have a child and violators could face forced late-term abortions and birth control procedures, massive fines, and the prospect of their child being deprived of an identification number, effectively making them non-citizens.

Rural China, where the preference for male offspring was especially strong and two children were still ostensibly allowed, became the focus of government efforts, with women forced to present evidence they were menstruating and buildings emblazoned with slogans such as “have fewer children, have better children.”

The government sought to stamp out selective abortion of female children, but with abortions legal and readily available, those operating illicit sonogram machines enjoyed a thriving business.

That has been the biggest factor in China’s lopsided sex ratio, with as many as millions more boys born, raising the possibility of social instability among China’s army of bachelors. Jan. 17’s report gave the sex imbalance as 104.34 men to every 100 women, though independent groups give the imbalance as considerably higher.

More disturbing for the government was the drastically falling birthrate, with China’s total population dropping for the first time in decades in 2022 and China being narrowly overtaken by India as the world’s most populous nation the following year. A rapidly aging population, declining workforce, lack of consumer markets, and migration abroad are putting the system under severe pressure.

While spending on the military and flashy infrastructure projects continues to rise, China’s already frail social security system is teetering, with increasing numbers of Chinese refusing to pay into the underfunded pension system.

Already, more than one-fifth of the population is aged 60 or over, with the official figure given as 310.3 million or 22% of the total population. By 2035, this number is forecast to exceed 30%, sparking discussion of changes to the official retirement age, which is one of the lowest in the world. With fewer students, some vacant schools and kindergartens are meanwhile being transformed into care facilities for older people.

Such developments are giving some credence to the aphorism that China, now the world’s second largest economy but facing major headwinds, will “grow old before it grows rich.”

Government inducements including cash payouts for having up to three children and financial help with housing costs have had only temporary effects.

Meanwhile, China continued its transition to an urban society, with 10 million more people moving to cities for an urbanization rate of 67%, up almost a percentage point from the previous year.

This story was reported by The Associated Press.