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PPI’s Trade Fact of the Week: China’s population likely began to fall this year

• November 2, 2022
• Ed Gresser

FACT: China’s population likely began to fall this year.

THE NUMBERS: Median ages by country –

WHAT THEY MEAN:

A demographic note from Science* last January:

“China’s population could begin to shrink this year, suggest data released yesterday [i.e. January 17, 2022] by China’s National Bureau of Statistics. The numbers show that in 2021, China’s birth rate fell for the fifth year in a row, to a record low of 7.52 per 1000 people. Based on that number, demographers estimate the country’s total fertility rate — the number of children a person will bear over their lifetime — is down to about 1.15, well below the replacement rate of 2.1 and one of the lowest in the world.”

The Science article finds short-term explanations in reduced child-bearing and collapsed immigration during the COVID crisis, plus an unenthusiastic Chinese public reaction to various incentives for childbirth. Demographers, though, have predicted a downward turn for some time; and the Chinese experience looks like part of a larger tectonic shift, in which the world’s population center is moving southwest, away from the Pacific littoral to south Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

By way of context, about half the world’s people today live in Asia. China remains (probably) the world’s most populous nation at 1.42 billion, 200 million people live in Japan and Korea, and the ten ASEAN countries are home to 700 million. A bit southwest, India is close to 1.4 billion and will probably surpass China next year; Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal combine for about 500 million. Among the rest, Africa is at about 1.2 billion, Europe and North America 1.1 billion, Latin America/Caribbean 650 million, and the Middle East 500 million. Put another way, the “center” of world population might be somewhere around Guangzhou or Yunnan.

East Asian societies, however, are already on average “older” (by median age rather than history) than most. In Japan, the world’s “oldest” major economy, the median person is a 48-year-old, perhaps with a child already out of college and thinking about retirement. Korea’s median is a slightly younger 42, Taiwan’s 41, and China’s 38. And as the Science anecdote suggests, wealthy Asian societies are aging rapidly in comparison to equally mature western Europe, the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, as they not only have few children but permit little immigration. Japan’s population accordingly began a slow decline about a decade ago, falling from a 128.5 million peak in 2009 to a current 125 million; UN demographers suggest it will be around 105 million by 2050. Korea is down about 100,000 from 52 million in 2020, and will likely be 45 million in 2050. ASEAN countries (mainly the Philippines and Indonesia) will offset some of East Asia’s population drop, but only partially.

Meanwhile trends in Europe are slightly down (stable in the north, dropping sharply in the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe), while trends in the western hemisphere are slightly up. And the populations of much “younger” countries in South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa are surging — the hypothetical median-age African is just out of high school and preparing for her 19th birthday — and likely to account for 90% of the next generation’s population growth. The UN’s projections for population changes to 2050 look like this:

By that point, India — now either just below or just above China at 1.4 billion — is likely to reach 1.7 billion people by 2050. (The entire world population in 1950 was 2.5 billion.) Moving westward, Pakistan will grow from 230 million to 365 million, Egypt from 104 million to 160 million, and Ethiopia from 105 million to 215 million. Nigeria is expected to reach 375 million — tying a still-growing United States as the world’s third-largest by population — and the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 95 million to 215 million. All this suggests a next-generation “center” of population perhaps in northern India or Karachi, with patterns of consumer demand, youth culture, and goods production as different as today’s are from those of 1990.

* Magazine published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science

FURTHER READINGS:

AAAS’ Science on China’s population downturn.

The UN’s “Population Prospects 2022”.

… and tables by country, with predicted population change and other demographics:

The CIA’s World Factbook has median age by country.

An alternate perspective –

Lebanese warrior/poet Usama ibn Munqidh reflects glumly in his autobiography (1186) on turning 90:

“My strength has become weakness … I creep about, a cane clutched in my hand, whose custom was to wield a spear or an Indian blade in war.”

Oh well! As they say, better than the alternative. A look at demographics suggests a lot of us will be thinking similar thoughts in the coming decades. It isn’t correct to say that “half of world population growth will be among the elderly” — these people are all alive now — but by age, if the U.N. estimates are correct, by 2050 the over-65 population will more than double (from today’s 770 million boomers to 1.6 billion cane-clutching millennials) as total world population rises by 1.75 billion. Over-65s will remain relatively scarce in some parts of the world — 4.7% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, 8% in the Pacific islands, 12%-13% in the Middle East and South Asia — but will make up more than a quarter of the populations of Europe and East Asia.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank Progressive Economy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007).  He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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