Demographic projections and trade implications - 0 views
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To summarize the raw numbers, China’s population is expected to grow from 1.32 billion today to 1.46 billion in 2030, after which it will decline slowly, to around 1.42 billion in 2050. Its working population is currently around 840 million. This component of the population will rise in the next ten years to around 910 million and then will decline quite rapidly to around 790 million by 2050.
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The graph below shows the composition of China’s population by age group. Needless to say the most dramatic change is the explosive growth of the over-65 population, followed by the decline in the share of the young. Another way of understanding this is to note that China’s median age basically climbs over this period from 24 to 45 (which, by the way, may have favorable consequence for long-term political stability).
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I don’t have the figures yet from before 1990, but looking at other sources I would guess that China’s working population grew by about 2% or more annually during the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s, as the table indicates, the growth rate of the working population slowed to 1.72%, declining further in the current decade to around 1.42% on average. The number of working Chinese keeps growing until around the middle of the next decade, and then begins to decline by about half a percent a year.
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