China’s population will fall for the fourth year in a row by 2025 as its birth rate falls to a record low, even as the government launches a series of incentives to boost them.
The country’s population fell by 3.39 million to reach 1.4 billion by the end of 2025, marking a faster decline than last year, government data showed on Monday.
Its birth rate fell to 5.63 per 1,000 people – a record low since the Communist Party took power in 1949 – while its death rate rose to 8.04 per 1,000 people, the highest since 1968.
Faced with an aging population and a slowing economy, Beijing is already trying hard to encourage more young people to marry and have children.
In 2016, it removed the long-standing one child policy and replaced it with a limit of two children. When that didn’t lead to a steady increase in births, the authorities announced they would allow it up to three children every couple in 2021.
Recently, China offered parents 3,600 yuan (£375; $500) each for their children under the age of three. Some provinces also provide their own child bonuses, including additional payments and extended maternity leave.
Some of these incentives have sparked controversy. For example, a recent 13% tax on contraceptives – including condoms, birth control pills and devices – have raised concerns about unwanted pregnancies and HIV rates.
China has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, at almost one birth per woman, below the replacement rate of 2.1. Other economies in the region, such as South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, have similarly low fertility rates.
China is also one of the most expensive countries in which to raise a child, according to a 2024 report by the YuWa Population Research Institute in Beijing.
But some Chinese told the BBC they were being blocked other reasons – including the desire for a carefree life without constant worries about their children.
“Few of my peers have children, and if they do, they obsess over getting the best nanny or enrolling the kids in the best schools. It’s exhausting,” a Beijing resident told the BBC in 2021.
United Nations experts believe that China’s population will continue on a downward path, estimating that the country will lose more than half of its current population by 2100.
A shrinking population has economic and social implications for the world’s second-largest economy: exacerbating an already shrinking workforce and weak consumer sentiment.
As more and more young people move away from their parents, more and more old people are left to fend for themselves or rely on government payments.
But the pension pot is drying up, according to the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences – and the country is running out of time to build enough funds to care for its growing elderly population.