BEIJING: To respond actively to a rapidly aging population, a year-end meeting on China’s economy demanded more support to boost fertility as well as postponement of the retirement age.
The annual Central Economic Work Conference was held in Beijing last week as Chinese leaders decided on the priorities for the economic work in 2023. Making economic stability a top priority, the meeting called for efforts to stabilize growth, employment and prices.
China, home to 1.4 billion people, expects the domestic demand to play a major role in driving economic growth. But coming along with the potential of the domestic market is the pressure of the population’s shifting structure. By the end of 2021, the country had over 267 million people aged 60 and above, accounting for 18.9 percent of the country’s population, data from the National Health Commission (NHC) shows. The proportion of people over 65 has grown from 9.1 percent in 2011 to 14.2 percent in 2021, which means the working-age population is shrinking quickly. Dependency ratios are rising as the population ages, straining the country’s pension system.
Last year, China’s birth rate plunged to its lowest level since the early 1960s, with 13 provinces recording negative population growth for the first time in the country’s modern history. According to Xu Qi, an associate professor at the school of social and behavioral sciences at Nanjing University, people will be reluctant to have more babies as long as the heavy burden of raising children rests on families. “In our culture, parents want their children to surpass them and usually provide the best resources they can offer for their children’s education and growth,” Xu said. “In this matter, quality is more important than quantity.”
Besides financial burden, experts say major reasons for declining interest in having babies also include lack of affordable childcare and motherhood penalty in career development.
–The Daily Mail-CGTN news exchage item
