China may or may not overcome the challenges of negative population growth, high youth unemployment and an aging population by radically recalibrating its economic focus on innovations and high tech.

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/8051008

As a result of the one-child policy, China’s fertility rate was well below 2 children per woman for more than three decades.

At the same time, according to the Beijing-based YuWa Population Research Institute, the average cost of raising a child to the age of 18 in China stood at 485,000 yuan ($76,629) for a first child in 2019, almost seven times China’s per capita GDP that year ($10,144). The financial burden has many families thinking twice before adding members to their family.

The combination of more retirees and a shrinking working-age population means fewer people have to support a larger share of the population, putting pressure on Beijing’s health care and pension programs.

  • tygerprints@kbin.social
    0·
    5 months ago

    I was in Beijing and travelled west across China and over two weeks’ time, and there was no city where the population wasn’t totally overcrowded at every turn. Visiting the Great Wall was like being in Walmart here on Black Friday - no elbow room at all. And in most public spaces we were shoulder to shoulder with other people all the time. I decrease in their enormous population could only be for the better in the long run.