Declining Population To Zap China's Workforce

Crystal, who wished to withhold her real name, is a 26-year-old living in Beijing. Unlike most women from previous generations in China, she is unmarried and currently faces no pressure to tie the knot.

Photo Insert: The workforce in China is already shrinking and an aging population is beginning to put pressure on the state's welfare services.

When asked why that is, she laughs: "I think it's because my family members are either never married or divorced."

It appears to be a common sentiment among young urban women in China. A 2021 survey by China's Communist Youth League of almost 3,000 people between the ages of 18 and 26, found that more than 40% of young women living in cities did not plan to marry - compared to less than 25% of men.

This is in part due to rising childcare costs and the ghosts of China's one-child policy, Samantha Chan reported for BBC News.

"Having just one child or no children has become the social norm in China," says Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a prominent critic of the one-child policy.

"The economy, social environment, education and almost everything else relates back to the one-child policy," he adds.

For Beijing, this is a worrying trend because China's population is declining. Its birth rate has been slowing for years but in 2022 its population fell for the first time in 60 years.

That's bad news for the world's second-largest economy, where the workforce is already shrinking and an aging population is beginning to put pressure on the state's welfare services.

China's working-age population - those between the ages of 16 and 59 - currently stands at about 875 million. They account for a little more than 60% of the country's people.

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