China is huge the kind of huge that's hard to wrap your head around beginning in the 1950s its population exploded from an already respectable 500 million to almost three times that today which makes it bigger than all of north america australia and europe combined its consistent economic growth has made it one of the world's great powers with enough military might to guarantee the deliberately significant south china ocean and enough impact to start the most eager foundation project in history aone trillion dollar network of ports pipelines and railroads across 65 countries but none of this was inevitable while china rapidly and forcefully industrialized.
It faced massive famine and housing shortages its economy needed time to develop and the world deeply feared overpopulation china's response was the famous one-child policy which limited ethnic chinese families to a single child with a few exceptions to enforce the law women were forcefully sterilized and fined for having too many children the problem is it worked or something did,
Historians doubt it prevented all 400 million births claimed by the government but china's total fertility rate the average number of children a woman will have in her lifetime has fallen all the way to 1.6 well below the 2.1 needed to maintain its size there simply aren't enough children and in a few short years china will begin to shrink the one child policy was repealed in 2015 but it won't make a significant difference because it only ever sped up the unavoidable as nations develop they choose to have drastically fewer children china's problem isn't unique about half the world lives in a country that is or soon will be in the same position but it is uniquely big and the timing uniquely bad the story of china in the 21st century is just as much about demographics as it is gdp military power and the rule of XI Jinping all of which will be seriously tested by the coming demographic crisis to understand why it's such a threat and whether something can be done.
We need to look a little more closely as individuals humans are unpredictable we don't know what someone will do or say or buy because they don't know impulse guides your decision to add guacamole just as it does what college you attend but countries don't care about individuals.
They care about groups and the beauty of demography is that groups are predictable vary of course nothing is certain theories compete and estimates vary but it's much easier to guess how many 18 year olds will have in 30 years and in general what they'll be doing
than say the next three decades of foreign policy or culture no country has yet figured out how to manufacture 18 year olds not even china and that means population today is a good peak at population tomorrow when this conditions is combined with geopolitics or economics.
it goes from mildly interesting to downright powerful here's what we know about china each of these lines is one of its age groups with babies at the bottom and elderly at the top first are consumers from 18 to 45 we know people are spending they're going to school taking out loans saving not so much and despite what this group says about millennials they're very important because consumer spending is one of the biggest contributors to economic growth next are the money makers these people have paid off their debt now they're saving for retirement and even though they're a smaller share of the population.
They generate most of its income in the u.s for example they alone pay half of all income tax that makes them a government's best friend finally at age 65 people are done working done saving and largely done spending what's special about this group is how quickly and how dramatically it begins in a single day a retiree often goes from contributing the highest taxes of their lifetime to almost nothing as they slowly collect pensions and social security for right now let's ignore the total number of people.
China could be bigger like this or smaller like this what's important is the balance between these different groups and that's why this graphic is so useful it's called a population pyramid because for most of history it has been a constant stream of babies at the bottom and a small number of deaths with each subsequent year a good example is niger where the average woman has 6.5 children mortality is very high making the average age only 15 but much of the world no longer looks like a pyramid.
In China it's turning upside down as you can see there are two big bulges in its population here and here the first is currently in its peak spending years the second right in the prime of its high earning high tax contributing years it's no wonder china is seeing massive
economic growth but that's what makes a demographic crisis such an ugly one it happens very slowly and then all at once remember this huge group of workers will soon and quite suddenly retire as they start waiting for the checks to arrive but the group responsible for writing those checks or at least funding them is getting smaller and smaller the problem isn't just financial a single child must now care for two parents and four grandparents
The United Nations expects China's dependency ratio the number of non-working compared to working age people to increase at roughly the same rate as japan's whose population began shrinking in 2011 and now sells more adult diapers than infant ones by 2050 China may have more retirees than all of Germany Japan France and Britain worse the one child policy combined with a cultural preference for males has created a massive gender imbalance as a result it's likely that by 2030
One fourth of chinese men in their late 30s will have never married
at a minimum an abundance of forgotten young men will cause some social anxiety or possibly as some experts suggest serious conflict it sounds a lot like the plot of a movie perhaps no country for young men.
Of course China is aware of the problem but it's fighting an inevitable demographic transition in the beginning for China the early 20th century children are abundant because you can only expect a few to survive you don't have the education or tools for family planning and because the best way to grow tomatoes is to first grow children seriously for any sleep-deprived parents watching this will be a shock but giving birth was once the ultimate productivity hack before there were tractors there were children and then people stopped dying it really only takes a few improvements to health care for rapid reductions in mortality and that's how the world grew from 1.6 to 6.1 billion people in one century that short window where fewer people are dying but everyone's still having children but it is just a window after mortality drops fertility is right behind it.
Industrialization brings rural workers to find jobs in the city children become less a utility and more a liability the kind that screams and cries and generates student loan debt the saying goes the best contraceptive is economic development
The fact that countries like China the U.S. Italy and Germany have this problem is an otherwise good sign dangerously low fertility is actually a side effect of many good things increased education opportunities for women and health care it's a no kidding first world problem there are many ways to offset the damage you can increase productivity taxes immigration and or fertility but it's hard to find a solution that doesn't come with its own set of problems.
Many countries for example now offer incentives for having children one of the most generous is sweden where couples have the right to 480 days of paid maternity leave per child the downside employers are more hesitant to hire young women who are far more likely to take those days off and it doesn't help that even adjusted for inflation the cost of raising a child has risen for decades babies just can't compete with dogs.
China has already gone from issuing fines for second children to issuing checks but people just don't seem to want them this paper predicts the new two-child policy will only increase china's population from 1.4 to 1.45 billion in 2029 because a person's ideal family size is largely determined by their own two generations of chinese now see one child as the norm plus young people are pressured to work longer and harder to keep up with the rising taxes needed to support.
The older population none of this means China can't come up with a solution in fact it has a few things going for it as people move to the city they'll become bigger contributors to the economy and today's young workers are far better educated than those they're replacing 11 years of schooling compared to just six there's also the bigger trend towards an automation-based economy which doesn't rely on a large number of workers but that too has the potential for chaos and even if it does manage to increase fertility remember that demographic changes are slow children born today won't start contributing for at least 18 years.
Whatever the outcome it'll define China's role in the 21st century. tell us in comment section what do you think China can get out from this problem or not.
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