China’s Census Could Point To A Looming Demographic Slide

China’s census is expected to show a further decline in the percentage of young people in its fast-aging population.

Policymakers are under pressure to come up with family-planning incentives and arrest a falling birth rate, amidst high living costs and an aversion to having children among urban couples.

China is expected to release the results of its latest census, conducted in late 2020, in coming days.

The proportion of elderly people in the population is believed to have risen and Analysts say the world’s most populous country is at risk of entering an irreversible population slide if effective measures are not found.

The continuation of those trends will undermine China’s working-age population and weigh on productivity.

In 2010, the proportion of the population aged 14 or younger plunged to 16.60% from 22.89% in 2000, an effect of a decades-old one-child policy. Citizens aged 60 and older accounted for 13.26%, up from about 10%.

A shrinking pool of working adults will also test its ability to pay and care for an aging nation.

In 2016, China scrapped the one-child policy in the hope of boosting the number of babies. It also set a target to increase its population to about 1.42 billion by 2020, from 1.34 billion in 2010.

But the birth rate has continued to decline.