China’s population shrinks for 4th straight year
China’s population fell for the fourth year in a row in 2025, the BBC reports.
The country’s birth rate has dropped to a record low, despite a series of government measures aimed at addressing the problem.
It is noted that births have dropped to their lowest level since the Communist Party came to power in 1949, while the mortality rate has increased.
Its population fell 3.39 million to reach 1.4 billion by the end of 2025, marking a quicker decline than the previous year.
Its birth rate fell to 5.63 per 1,000 people – a record low since the Communist Party took power in 1949 – while its death rate rose to 8.04 per 1,000 people, the highest since 1968.
Faced with an aging population and sluggish economy, Beijing has been trying hard to encourage more young people to marry and have children.
In 2016, it scrapped its longstanding one-child policy and replaced it with a two-child limit. When that did not lead to a sustained upsurge in births, authorities announced that they would allow up to three children per couple in 2021.
More recently, China has offered parents 3,600 yuan (£375; $500) per each of their children under the age of three. Certain provinces are also dishing out their own baby bonuses, including additional payouts and extended maternity leave.
China has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, at around one birth per woman, below the replacement rate of 2.1. Other economies in the region, such as South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, have similarly low fertility rates.
China is also one of the most expensive countries in which to raise a child, according to a 2024 report by the YuWa Population Research Institute in Beijing.
A shrinking population has economic and social implications for the world’s second-largest economy: exacerbating an already declining workforce and weak consumer sentiment.
With many young people moving away from their parents, there is also a growing number of seniors who are being left to look after themselves or rely on government payments.
But the pension pot is running dry, according to the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences – and the country is running out of time to build enough funds to care for its growing elderly population.
