China demographics thread.

[gelgoog]

They need to increase the retirement age. It is as simple as that. But it won't be to 70 years. That is laughable.
Right now China has like the lowest retirement age among all developed countries. It is quite likely the retirement age will be increased to 65 years for men and 60 for women. This would be in line with most countries and takes into consideration the increased life expectancy of Chinese today. There might be a chance to retire earlier but with reduced benefits.

 

[AF-1]

That is very reasonable. It seems our media push 70 years in order to see people reaction dreaming to eventually push the limit to 70 years in my country.

 

[zbb]

They need to increase the retirement age. It is as simple as that. But it won't be to 70 years. That is laughable.
Right now China has like the lowest retirement age among all developed countries. It is quite likely the retirement age will be increased to 65 years for men and 60 for women. This would be in line with most countries and takes into consideration the increased life expectancy of Chinese today. There might be a chance to retire earlier but with reduced benefits.

Agreed, but they should also equalize the retirement ages for men and women. Women have longer healthy life expectancies than men, so there is no good reason to have lower retirement ages for women.

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Standard retirement age in China is 60 for men, 55 for women in white collar jobs, and 50 for women in blue collar jobs.

In dangerous and physically demanding fields (mining, steel working, etc.), the retirement ages are even earlier, 55 for men and 45 for women.

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[manqiangrexue]

I don't believe the problem is cultural. China's fertility rate was 2.73 in 1988 and dropped sharply to 1.62 in 1998. I don't believe the basic underlying culture can change so much in one decade.

I don't know the exact timeline but it is absolutely culture. Let this be clear: Chinese people will have whatever we want to have regardless of the law, the circumstances, and even natural biology sometimes. We are the best at finding ways to make things work. My wife and I are both 35+, with careers that take up most of our time but when I said we need 4 kids, she jumped right on it, set up IVF with surrogacy and we are like 75% done in 2.5 years (overcoming major hiccups on the way). As a geneticist, I place so much importance on having children that I would rather be blue collar and work for basic wages and have 4 kids than a millionaire with 1. So if Chinese people don't want to have kids, they are either wayyyy to old, infertile in an extreme way (both beyond modern science and very rare), or they don't want to. It's the latter in the vast majority of cases.

The problem is that culture tells people it's ok; the DINK life is great! You get to spend all your money on yourselves, have vacations, don't have to take care of anyone, look cool with no obligations, etc... all selfish reasons imported from the West, which is also suffering this issue in every first world well-to-do population (and I mean population as in subgroups within nations). The is probably even worse in China because the Chinese have the ability of picking something up and taking it to a higher level than the original; great for tech, terrible for bad habits/culture. And as this is basically the first generation of DINK culture, we have yet to see large numbers of old childless people die in emptiness and regret to set a warning to the youth. China's fertility issue would be over instantly if the stigma was culturally implemented that childless people are irresponsible, selfish, and stupid with dead end barren futures and they don't deserve the love and care their parents gave them because they refuse to pay it forward (and backwards denying their parents the joy of grandchildren).

The only real downside to immediately striving to go this route is the loss of productivity. When parents decide that they need multiple kids no matter what and the grandparents are dead or unable to help, work productivity will be sacrificed, at a crucial phase in the fight against the US. So the question is, do we want to take the hit now and invest in the future immediately risking a much longer cycle to overtake the US or do we want to hold onto the throttle and take the overheat damage a little longer to overtake the US, then let off the power to recover? The longer we stay on the throttle, the greater the damage but the sooner we overtake the US, the sooner we create an overall environment that is positive and conducive to Chinese efforts in all directions. It's really not an easy choice.

 

[Virtup]

The only real downside to immediately striving to go this route is the loss of productivity. When parents decide that they need multiple kids no matter what and the grandparents are dead or unable to help, work productivity will be sacrificed, at a crucial phase in the fight against the US. So the question is, do we want to take the hit now and invest in the future immediately risking a much longer cycle to overtake the US or do we want to hold onto the throttle and take the overheat damage a little longer to overtake the US, then let off the power to recover? The longer we stay on the throttle, the greater the damage but the sooner we overtake the US, the sooner we create an overall environment that is positive and conducive to Chinese efforts in all directions. It's really not an easy choice.

While what you said makes sense, you need to take into account the massive amount of inertia that is involved in both population control and culture. To build on your analogy, China and the US are like two massive 200000 ton ships racing each other. The Chinese ship is rapidly overtaking the american one on the straight but there's a sharp turn coming right after. So rather than staying full throttle and then attempting a sudden braking that has a high chance of failing and going off track (inverted population pyramid), I think it's better to start gradually releasing the throttle while looking for the best racing line that allows for carrying as much speed through the corner as possible. Based on the latest news from the CPC (mentionned in the previous posts), this seems to be what they're trying to do. Whether they'll succeed or not is up in the air.

 

[manqiangrexue]

While what you said makes sense, you need to take into account the massive amount of inertia that is involved in both population control and culture. To build on your analogy, China and the US are like two massive 200000 ton ships racing each other. The Chinese ship is rapidly overtaking the american one on the straight but there's a sharp turn coming right after. So rather than staying full throttle and then attempting a sudden braking that has a high chance of failing and going off track (inverted population pyramid), I think it's better to start gradually releasing the throttle while looking for the best racing line that allows for carrying as much speed through the corner as possible. Based on the latest news from the CPC (mentionned in the previous posts), this seems to be what they're trying to do. Whether they'll succeed or not is up in the air.

I don't think this analogy holds. There is no sharp turn. The ship travels forward in the sense that technology and economic buildup always develop and grow. The population issue is on another dimension; it is the fuel to the ship travelling. But it's a live fuel that balances by replicating and burning with time. If it doesn't replicate as fast as it's being burned, the ship will eventually sail slower and slower. Also, to travel in another ship's wake is extremely energy-expensive. So the question is, do we hit the full throttle to surpass the US ship burning off more fuel, calculating that once we are ahead of the wake, we will be in a more fuel-economic state be able to let off the throttle to achieve equilibrium, or do we let off the throttle to find that equilibrium now while tolerating the wake for longer so we we can get faster replication due to having more fuel?

Additionally, there are strong technological efforts and successes to increase the power of the fuel so that less is needed to achieve the same or more.

 

[Eventine]

I don't believe the problem is cultural. China's fertility rate was 2.73 in 1988 and dropped sharply to 1.62 in 1998. I don't believe the basic underlying culture can change so much in one decade.

TFR collapses are sudden because it is generational in nature. The lower TFR may already have been in place in 1988 with younger generations, but older generations were holding them up because the calculation is an average across all age groups. So as the older generation of child bearing women lose their ability to conceive, and the younger generation aren't having as many children, it will seem as though TFR suddenly collapsed.

The biggest difference between 1988 and 1998 was likely the one child policy's effects, though. Remember it took a while for the policy to be implemented across the country - it wasn't just a one and done in 1979.

Regardless, a decade is A LOT of time for cultural change to happen. Women in the 1950s and 1960s barely even went to school. But within a generation, female literacy and education attainment shot up like a rocket, and fertility saw a similar drop.

 

[fishrubber99]

Recent 2024 H1 marriage numbers have come out,

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China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs released the latest statistics on marriage and divorce registrations during the first and second quarters of this year, showing 3.43 million couples get married and 1.27 million get divorced.

The number of marriage registrations during the first half of this year dropped by 498,000 couples from 3.92 million couples during the same period of last year and the number of divorce registrations decreased by 43,000 couples from 1.31 million couples during the same period of 2023, Chinese domestic news portal thepaper.cn reported.

 

[fishrubber99]

I recently looked at a population pyramid from a

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and I wanted to share some layman's thoughts of the near term of China's aging + demographic changes that are somewhat optimistic. (I don't know if anyone has already mentioned these points, if so I'll just reiterate them here)

I think in the long term, there is really no reversing the trend of aging + population decline. I think it's possible we see a China that has a population of less than 1 billion people by the end of the century, although it's really difficult or nigh impossible to project population change in that large of a timeframe. That being said, there is a bright spot in the next 2 decades that we need to be aware of.

• For younger Chinese who are at the age where they are most likely to start families + have children, or will be of age to have children in the future (<39 year olds) I noticed there are two distinct cohorts that are visible as a "trough" + "hump" in the pyramid
• One "trough" is the 20-29 generation (highlighted in orange), where the effects of the one-child policy were the most obvious. They are the current generation of Chinese that are beginning to have children.
  • Since they are both smaller cohort than the 30-39 years old generation and the 5-14 years old generation, when they begin having children + marrying, the absolute number of first marriages and children born will go down (i.e. a "trough" in the demographic pyramid will correspond with a similarly shaped "trough" in the pyramid 20-30 years down the line)
• After the 2000s, the peak of Chinese absolute marriage numbers and of children born happened in the early to mid-2010.
  • This was because of the "hump" of the current 30-39 generation. They were a very large cohort, so when they began marrying and having children the numbers of both first marriages and children born peaked.
• There is another, similar but significantly smaller "hump" that is in the 5-14 years old cohort (highlighted in red). They are mainly the children of the current 30-39 cohort.
  • (The main point) The short-term optimism comes from the population of this cohort being significantly bigger than the 20-29 years old cohort. Just like how a "trough" in the pyramid corresponds with a "trough" 20-30 years down the line, a "hump" will also correspond with a "hump" 15-20 years down the line as well.
  • In my view, if the Chinese government creates the conditions where the cost of child-bearing becomes increasingly socialized (more stringent laws against work discrimination for women with children, more affordable childcare, less expensive schooling, cash and consumption incentives, etc) there is a chance to capitalize on the "hump" which will reduce the speed of population aging.
  • We also have to note that the tertiary education rate in the last few years has increased and exceeded 60% in 2022, and this happened in a very, very short period of time (the tertiary education rate in 2012 was around 30%). This could've also resulted in a large chunk of the 20-29 years old cohort to delay marriage by a few years, as they have at least 4 more years of additional schooling to get through.

TLDR: the current 4-15 years old cohort of China's population is bigger than the current 20-29 years old cohort, which will result in comparatively more children being born down the line when the 4-15 year old people become adults and start families. There is also a possibility of seeing a recovery in birth rates if the 20-29 year old generation begin having children, just at a later time in their lives (possibly when they're in their early to mid 30s) due to a rapid increase in tertiary education enrolment in the past decade, which could delay marriage by a few years.

 

[gadgetcool5]

Recent 2024 H1 marriage numbers have come out,

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Good god, a 12.5% drop. That's utterly awful and an accelerated drop from the first quarter.