China announces first population decline since 1961.
The population of China in 2022 it contracted for the first time in more than 60 years, as the world’s most populous nation sees an aging society and declining birth rate.
The country’s population stood at around 1,411,750,000 at the end of 2022, a decrease of 850,000 from the end of 2021, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in Beijing reported on Tuesday.
A total of 9.56 million births were registered against 10.41 million deaths, the NBS said in a briefing.
This is the first time China’s population has shrunk since 1961, when the Asian nation witnessed the worst famine in its modern history, blamed on Mao Zedong’s catastrophic agricultural policy known as the Great Leap Forward.
Effects of the one-child policy
The office added that men continued to outnumber women, as the male-female ratio was 722.06 million to 689.69 million, a result of China’s strict one-child policy that only officially ended. in 2016 and a traditional preference for male offspring.
After abandoning the one-child policy, Beijing began allowing couples to have up to three children in 2021. However, the move has not reversed the demographic recession.
The cost of raising children in China’s cities is often cited as a cause of failure.
In some parts of the country, local authorities have put measures in place to encourage couples to have children.
In Shenzhen, a megacity in southern China, there is a birth bonus and allowances are paid until the child is three years old.
A couple who have had their first child will receive 3,000 yuan (410 euros, 443 dollars), a figure that rises to 10,000 yuan for the third.
In Jinan, a monthly stipend of 600 yuan is paid from January 1 to couples who have a second child.
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In the long term, UN experts forecast China’s population to shrink by 109 million by 2050, more than triple the decline from their previous forecast in 2019.
China is expected to overtake India as the most populous nation on the planet soon, if it hasn’t already.
Estimates have shown that the population of India is over 1.4 billion and still increasing.
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