China’s population prospects: A historical perspective

29 November 2022

China is transitioning to a new phase of declining population size and rapid population ageing. In the United Nations’ recently released World Population Prospects 2022, the projections for China highlight the speed and scale of this transition. As a result of persistent low birth rates, the era of rapid population growth that began in the late 17th century and continued well into the 20th century is coming to an end. In 2023, China is likely to become one of more than 60 nations experiencing population decline. In that year, its population will peak at 1.43 billion and then decline slowly, returning to 1.31 billion in 2050. Coincidentally, in 2023 India’s population size will surpass China’s. China’s working-age population, which has already been falling in absolute terms and as a share of the population, will continue to decline. In the absence of increases in worker productivity or in the share of working-age adults who are employed, this will constrain economic growth. These demographic trends have led some observers to conclude that China is “growing old before it grows rich” and headed for stagnation or even decline.

As a result of both low birth rates and falling death rates at advanced ages, China’s population will continue to age. In what the United Nations refers to as the ‘medium variant’ scenario, the median age will rise from 38.5 in 2022 to 50.7 in 2050, the share of the population aged 20-64 will fall from 63.4 per cent to 54.7 per cent, the population 65 and above will rise from 13.7 per cent to 30.1 per cent, and the population aged 75 and above will rise from 4.6 per cent to 17.0 per cent. Projections that incorporate different assumptions about trends in birth and death rates have broadly similar qualitative implications. Increasing numbers of elderly will increase the need for spending on pensions and medical care, and increase the time and financial burden on adult children caring for their parents.

Past and present

The government has responded with policies intended to increase or at least stabilise fertility rates. In 2015, it began to loosen restrictions on the number of children couples could have, and in 2021, it finally abolished restrictions completely. It has also taken steps to reduce the burdens associated with childrearing, improve pre- and post-natal care for mothers, and offer financial incentives for childbearing. There have also been signs of a turn towards more intrusive policies, including reduced access to abortion.

Policies should instead focus on adaptations to realise fully the potential of the existing labour force and alter the environment to facilitate healthy and independent living for the elderly.

The persistence of low birth rates, even after the recent abolition of limits on family size and the introduction of other measures to promote childbearing, would have come as a surprise to advocates of the One-Child Policy in the 1980s. At the time, many commentators argued that the policy was the only way to counter a tendency for couples in China to have more children than they had the means to support. Fertility had already declined substantially between the introduction of the Later-Longer-Fewer initiative in the early 1970s and the introduction of the One-Child Policy in 1979. In other East Asian societies, fertility had declined rapidly once contraception and abortion became widely available. However, the Chinese state believed that unless it acted decisively, couples would have too many children. The resulting population growth would slow China’s economic development.

The belief that in the absence of an intrusive intervention couples would have too many children was rooted in a Malthusian understanding of reproductive behaviour in China. Writing at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, Malthus correctly observed that women in China married early and universally. Based on the patterns in Western Europe, he assumed that once married, couples would have children at a rapid pace, without regard to their economic circumstances. The resulting population growth would lead to misery, and higher death rates would eventually bring the population in line with resources. In the 1990s, however, historical research showed that Malthus’s original assumption about the height of past fertility of married couples in China was wrong. Rather than maximising the total number of births, couples strategised to ensure that at least one son reached adulthood and carried on the family name. Sometimes this meant having fewer children but investing more in them. Overall, poor couples had fewer children, and birth rates fell when times were bad.

Historical evidence that couples were calculating their reproductive behaviour calls into question the role of the One-Child Policy in birth rate trends after 1979. That birth rates have continued their long-term decline up to the present has been as much a reflection of couples exercising their preferences for smaller families as the direct effect of the policy. Couples were already primed by a long tradition of adjusting their reproduction according to their circumstances and made use of modern birth control techniques once they were available. Consequently, by the time the One-Child Policy was introduced in 1979, a sustained decline in birth rates was already underway. Had the families who still wanted more children been allowed to have them, birth rates would only have been slightly higher, the worst excesses of the One-Child Policy would have been avoided, and population ageing would have been slightly slower.

Policy responses

A historical perspective on reproductive behaviour in China should inform thinking about possible responses to current low birth rates. Efforts to increase birth rates need to align with the tradition of couples calibrating their reproductive behaviour according to their circumstances. Policies should enable couples who want more children to have them, by reducing the financial, psychological, and time costs. This requires addressing discrimination against working mothers, a hyper-competitive school environment that leads to over-investment of money and time in children’s academic development, and economic precarity that makes families feel insecure. Conversely, intrusive policies that seek to stabilise or raise birth rates in ways that conflict with couples’ reproductive preferences may face resistance, incur a human cost, and have little additional effect on birth rates, much as the One-Child Policy did.

Even if policies increase the birth rate, they will not have much effect on age composition. For example, even though the United Nations’ ‘medium variant’ scenario already incorporates an assumption that the total fertility rate will rise from 1.18 in 2022 to 1.31 in 2050, an immediate and sustained increase in birth rates to the level required to offset the effects of death rates on population size would only increase the projected population aged 20-64 from 54.7 per cent to 56.4 per cent. Also, any children born right away will take two decades to reach working age.

Policies should instead focus on adaptations to realise fully the potential of the existing labour force and alter the environment to facilitate healthy and independent living for the elderly. Facilitating the re-entry of working-age mothers into employment and increasing the retirement age will expand the labour force. Remedying inequalities in access to education will increase the productivity of the employed. Upgrading the built environment to improve mobility, safety, and convenience will facilitate healthy, independent living for the elderly, reducing the burden on caregivers and the state. Overall, there is little reason for alarm, and some reason for optimism, at least if the right mix of policies is introduced. While the rapid growth rates of recent decades are unlikely to return, economic stagnation or decline is not inevitable.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.

Author biography

Cameron Campbell is Chair Professor in the Division of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is a 2022-23 Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. His research focuses on family, population, and inequality in China and in comparative perspective. Image credit: Unsplash/Matt Zhang.