China's Population is Aging Rapidly

SS says

This is in line with what Harry Dent has said as well.

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704187604576290031070463712.html?mod=WSJ_business_AsiaNewsBucket

BEIJING – China's vast population is aging rapidly, according to the latest census figures released on Thursday, a demographic trend that threatens to sap the country's economic vitality.

But China's top leaders have declared that they are not prepared to dismantle a policy that has drawn widespread criticism for using forced abortions, sterilizations and other coercive practices. President Hu Jintao on Tuesday told the Communist Party's Central Committee that China will "stick to and improve its current family planning policy and maintain a low birth rate," the official Xinhua news agency reported.Some Chinese demographers have seized on the numbers to argue that the government should abandon its one-child policy, put in place in 1980 to deal with a population explosion encouraged by Chairman Mao Zedong.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, which surveyed 400 million rural and urban households from November last year, China's population has risen to 1.339 billion from 1.265 billion in 2000, when the last census was carried out. That reflects average annual growth of 0.57% from 2000 to 2010, down from 1.07% in 1990-2000.

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The new population figure reflects a growth rate of 5.84% over the decade. That compares with a growth rate of 11.66% over the previous decade.

People over the age of 60 now account for 13.3% of China's population, compared to 10.33% in 2000. Those over the age of 65 account for nearly 8.9% compared with 7.1% a decade ago.

The reserve of future workers is also dwindling. Those under the age of 14 now make up 16.6% of the population from 23% 10 years ago.

China's National Population and Family Planning Commission, which oversees the widely reviled one-child policy, says the policy has prevented 400 million births. The government credits it with helping to lift the country out of poverty and underpinning three decades of rapid growth.

But Wang Feng, a population expert and director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy in Beijing, said on Thursday that economic growth is now imperiled. Slowing population growth rates endangers the country's massive pool of labor, which has been the country's economic engine.

"For the national fertility level to be so low, and for so long, is a wake-up call for policymakers that there will be consequences," said Mr. Wang, a member of a group of elite demographers, academics and former officials who have been calling for the one-child policy to be replaced with a two-child policy – and even incentives to have children.

Members of the group say that the Chinese labor force is due to start shrinking from 2016. That would throw into reverse a demographic trend that fed China's manufacturing boom and put upward pressure on wages, which is likely to result in higher rates of inflation. The number of workers aged 20-24 is already shrinking.

Family planners have justified the one-child policy in previous years by stating that the country's fertility rate -- the average number of children born to each woman -- is 1.8, said Professor Cai Yong, an expert in China's demography at the University of North Carolina.

However, the real number, according to calculations from the census data, is significantly lower than the 1.8 level, said Mr. Cai. That would put the fertility rate dangerously below the "replacement rate" of 2.1.

At a press briefing on Thursday, the statistics bureau commissioner, Ma Jiantang, acknowledged that the population shifts are stirring up new challenges. "Aging is affecting coastal and developed areas and their labor forces most, but all 31 provinces are affected," he said.

The data also show that urban areas are swelling. Nearly half of China's population, or 49.68%, now lives in cities. Around 36% lived in urban areas in 2000.

Urbanization adds to the aging problem, as those who migrate to cities are less likely to have children, said Mr. Wang. Birth rates in large cities are lower than in rural areas, he said. Shanghai's fertility rate is less than one child per woman, he said.

China's average household count is now 3.1 people, down from 3.44 a decade ago, according to the census data.

When it was introduced in 1980, officials said the one-child policy would last for 30 years. But the 30th anniversary came and went last year with no word on when it might be phased out, although the government is considering limited pilot schemes to relax the policy.

The growth of China's population has been declining since 1987. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that China's population will peak in 2026, with around 1.4 billion people and that India will overtake China in 2025 as the world's most populous nation.