By comparison, the mean childbearing age has gone up by just one year across all middle-income countries (which China is part of). Since 2000, the mean childbearing age in China has increased by three years, rising from 26 to 29. In addition to having fewer children overall, women in China are choosing to have children later in life. The YuWa Population Research Institute, a Beijing-based think tank, has concluded that China is among the most expensive places to raise a child and that these economic concerns – rather than governmental policies – are tied to women not wanting to have more children these days. And aside from a brief one-year increase following the allowance of a second child, fertility rates have continued to fall in China. Notably, fertility rates in China were already falling prior to the introduction of the one-child policy, as they often fall alongside economic development and urbanization. This is despite the relaxation of the country’s well-known one-child policy, which was introduced in 1980 but amended to allow two children beginning in 2016 and three children beginning in 2021. Still, regardless of the precise timing of China’s population peak or the magnitude of its projected decline, there is near-universal consensus that the nation’s population is on a trajectory of decline.Ĭhina’s 2022 total fertility rate is estimated to be 1.18 children per woman – down substantially from earlier decades and significantly below the “ replacement rate” of 2.1 children per woman. These other estimates sometimes rely less on official Chinese population data (which researchers say is inflated because of financial incentives for local governments) and instead use other data, such as the number of mandatory vaccines administered to newborns in China. Some demographers, for example, think the country’s population might have already peaked in 2021 or even earlier. Other groups and academics differ somewhat from the UN in their forecasts of China’s population, but nearly all still predict a decline. The UN’s high variant scenario projects a population of 543 million Americans by then, while in its low scenario, the U.S. population of 337 million in 2021 is expected to grow to 394 million by 2100 in the UN’s medium variant scenario. And in the UN’s “low variant” scenario – where the total fertility rate is projected to be 0.5 births below that of the medium variant scenario – China’s population is projected to fall to as low as 488 million by 2100.įor comparison purposes, the U.S. Using the UN’s “high variant” scenario – in which the total fertility rate in China is projected to be 0.5 births per woman above that of the medium variant scenario – the country’s population is still projected to fall to 1.153 billion by 2100. The large population decline is projected even though it assumes that China’s total fertility rate will rise from 1.18 children per woman in 2022 to 1.48 in 2100. That’s according to the UN’s “ medium variant,” or middle-of-the-road projection. The UN forecasts that China’s population will decline from 1.426 billion this year to 1.313 billion by 2050 and below 800 million by 2100. Related: Global population projected to exceed 8 billion in 2022 half live in just seven countries It’s also roughly equivalent to the population of all the nations in Africa (1.427 billion). This is larger than the entire population of Europe (744 million) and the Americas (1.04 billion). Here are key facts about China’s population and its projected changes in the coming decades, based on data from the UN and other sources:Īlthough China will lose its title as the world’s most populous country, the UN still estimates its population at 1.426 billion people in 2022. Other sources of information for this analysis are available through the links included in the text. The low and high scenarios make different assumptions about fertility: In the high scenario, total fertility is 0.5 births above the total fertility in the medium scenario in the low scenario, it is 0.5 births below the medium scenario. The medium scenario projection is the median of many thousands of simulations. The estimates produced by the UN are based on “all available sources of data on population size and levels of fertility, mortality and international migration” and do not include the areas separately listed by the UN as “China, Hong Kong SAR” “China, Macau SAR” or “China, Taiwan Province of China.”īecause future levels of fertility and mortality are inherently uncertain, the UN uses probabilistic methods to account for both the past experiences of a given country and the past experience of other countries under similar conditions. This Pew Research Center analysis is primarily based on the World Population Prospects 2022 report by the United Nations.
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