- China’s fertility rate is estimated to have dropped to a record low of 1.09 in 2022.
- China’s fertility rate is already one of the world’s lowest alongside South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
- President Xi Jinping in May presided over a meeting to study the topic.
- China has said it will focus on education, science, and technology to improve population quality and strive to maintain a “moderate fertility” level to support economic growth in the future.
- Gender discrimination and traditional stereotypes of women caring for their children are still widespread throughout the country.
- Marriages in China reached a historic low in 2022, amid its declining birth rate and population.
China’s fertility rate is estimated to have dropped to a record low of 1.09 in 2022, a figure likely to rattle authorities as they try to boost the country’s declining number of new births.
China’s fertility rate is already one of the world’s lowest alongside South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Concerned about China’s first population drop in six decades and its rapidly aging population, Beijing is urgently trying an array of measures to lift the birth rate including financial incentives and improved childcare facilities.
President Xi Jinping in May presided over a meeting to study the topic.
China has said it will focus on education, science, and technology to improve population quality and strive to maintain a “moderate fertility” level to support economic growth in the future.
High childcare costs and having to stop their careers have put many women off having more children or any at all. Gender discrimination and traditional stereotypes of women caring for their children are still widespread throughout the country. Authorities have in recent months increased rhetoric on sharing the duty of child rearing but paternity leave is still limited in most provinces.
Hong Kong’s Family Planning Association said in a separate release that the number of childless women in the special Chinese administrative region more than doubled from five years ago to 43.2% last year.
The percentage of couples with one or two children also tumbled while the average number of children per woman dropped from 1.3 in 2017 to a record low of 0.9 last year, according to its survey.
Marriages in China reached a historic low in 2022, amid its declining birth rate and population. The Ministry of Civil Affairs of China reported that 6.8 million couples registered marriages in 2022, a 10.5 percent decrease from 2021 when 7.63 million marriages were registered. This is the lowest figure since 1986 when the Chinese government started documenting these statistics.
As authorities struggle to deal with these demographic changes, fewer couples are getting married. This decline can be attributed to the Covid pandemic restrictions that kept tens of millions confined to their homes or compounds for weeks last year, but that isn’t the sole reason. For the first time in 60 years, China’s population dwindled, prompting predictions that the nation would age before becoming rich.
(With inputs from agencies)
