‘China’s 2020 birth rate was lowest in 43 years’
OFFICIAL DATA SHOWS THAT THE BIRTH RATE IN THE COUNTRY FELL BELOW 1% LAST YEAR, GLOBAL TIMES REPORTED
BEIJING: China’s birth rate fell below one percent in 2020, marking the lowest rate of childbirth in 43 years, official statistics have revealed, state-run tabloid Global Times reported on Saturday, indicating the extent of China’s demographic problems.
The birth rate in 2020 was recorded as 8.52 per thousand people, according to the recently published China Statistical Yearbook 2020 compiled by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the report said.
According to the report, the natural growth rate of the population was 1.45 per thousand, which was also a new low in 43 years. The birth rate is the number of births in the total population, while the growth rate is calculated after deducting the number of deaths from births.
The birth rate in China was 10.48 per 1,000 in 2019, according to NBS data released last year.
“An article published in May this year in a professional journal Population Research, affiliated with China Population and Development Research Center, found out that the monthly decline of birth rate has nosedived in 2020 compared with the same period of 2015, with November and December declining above 45 percent respectively,” the report said.
The country’s birth rate has been falling for years prompting the government to gradually ease the one-child policy, which was in place since the late 1970s.
Demographers say the falling number of women of childbearing age, and the impact of Covid-19 contributed to the low birth rate.
“There are three main reasons: Number of child-bearing women shrinking, rapid urbanisation and more people receiving higher education, and delay of births due to anti-Covid-19 measures including vaccination,” Huang Wenzheng a demography expert at the Beijing-based think-tank Centre for China and Globalisation told HT.
China, the most populous country in the world, is burdened with an ageing citizenry despite scrapping the decadesold one-child policy in 2016.
China’s population is growing at its slowest pace in decades with the country adding only 72 million people in the past decade, the once-in-a-decade census data showed earlier this year.
In May, China allowed married couples to have up to three children, in a major shift from the current limit of two following a worrying decline in births confirmed in new Census data.
“The three-child policy and supporting measures will be conducive to improving China’s demographic structure and implementing the national strategy of actively responding to population aging,” the Chinese government had said at the time regarding the decision.
“The document on improving birth policies to promote longterm and balanced population development allows a couple to have three children and draws up supporting measures to encourage births,” it said.
The change to the two-child policy did not show the desired growth in population needed to sustain the world’s second-largest economy in the long run.