- Researchers say previous estimates may have severely underestimated the pace of demographic decline
- Census data says the birth rate was 1.3 children for each woman last year – well below the level needed to stop the population from falling
China’s population decline may be much faster than expected, with the number of people in the country halving within the next 45 years, a new study has warned.
The projection was based on the official birth rate of 1.3 children per woman last year – well below the figure of 2 needed to keep the number stable – and forecast a much more dramatic decline than previous estimates.
China’s current population is over 1.4 billion and in 2019 the United Nations projected that China would still have around 1.3 billion people by 2065.
Another estimate published in The Lancet by researchers with the University of Washington last year suggested the Chinese population would halve by 2100.
But the new research, from Professor Jiang Quanbao and colleagues with the institute for population and development studies at Xian Jiaotong University, warned that the country’s population decline may have been severely underestimated.
The UN’s projection, for instance, was based on the assumption that China’s fertility rate would remain at above 1.7 children per woman. China had 12 million newborns last year, 25 per cent lower than the UN’s estimate.
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