Births in China drop to lowest in nearly 60 years

China’s new births fell to their lowest in almost six decades amid the coronavirus pandemic last year, putting the country’s population on course to peak within the next five years and adding pressure on Beijing to step up reforms to maintain economic growth as the workforce shrinks.

There were 1.412 billion people in China last year, according to the results of a onceadecade census, up 5.38% from a decade before, but slightly below previous official projections. The annual average population growth of 0.53% in the past decade was the slowest since the 1950s.

China’s population has become much more urbanized and educated over the past decade, trends which should allow the world’s secondlargest economy to continue expanding even after its population peaks. In order to remain an engine of world growth, China will require a large increase in spending on pensions and health care and must invest more in education and infrastructure to boost productivity.

Slower growth in the population means it could peak before 2025, according to estimates from Bloomberg Economics. Demographers generally predict that China will be overtaken by India as the world’s most populous nation sometime over the next decade, though China’s economy will remain larger as its workers are more productive.

The number of children born in the country last year fell to 12 million, the National Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday — down from 14.65 million in 2019 and the lowest number since 1961 when the country was struggling in the aftermath of a famine that killed tens of millions of people.

Even though China rapidly contained the coronavirus outbreak and the economy returned to growth last year, its fertility mirrored other major nations such as the U.S., which saw births slump as economic and social dislocation undercut people’s desire to have children.

The share of the working population — those ages 15 to 59 — slumped to 63.4% in 2020 from more than 70% a decade ago, according to the census. Residents ages 60 and above accounted for 18.7% of the population in 2020, up from 13.3% in 2010.

The ruling Communist Party has been planning for a peak in the population since the 1970s when the country’s fertility rates started to decline due to rising incomes and policies restricting births.