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China working age population to fall 10% by 2040

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Core Tip:China’s working age population will fall more than 10 per cent by 2040 in spite of a recent relaxation of its one child policy, the World Bank warned on Wednesday, heightening the risk of the world’s most populous country “getting old before getting rich”

China’s working age population will fall more than 10 per cent by 2040 in spite of a recent relaxation of its one child policy, the World Bank warned on Wednesday, heightening the risk of the world’s most populous country “getting old before getting rich”.

The number of potential workers in China, a cohort defined as people between the ages of 15 and 64, fell in 2012 for the first time in decades — a tipping point that has profound consequences for everything from the cost of labour to government and corporate pension burdens.

A further decline of 10 per cent would equate to a net loss of 90m Chinese workers, a number greater than the population of Germany, and is consistent with demographic pressures across East Asia. The working populations of South Korea, Thailand and Japan are also expected to fall by 10 per cent or more over the next 25 years, according to a new report released by the World Bank in Beijing.

“East Asia has undergone the most dramatic demographic transition we have ever seen,” said Axel van Trotsenburg, regional vice-president. “All developing countries in the region risk getting old before getting rich.”

As of 2010, almost 40 per cent of all people on the planet aged 65 or older — some 211m individuals — lived in East Asia.

The World Bank estimates that a least a dozen East Asian countries will see the percentage of their populations aged 65 or higher double to 14 per cent in a quarter century or less. In France and the US, the same transformation took 115 and 69 years respectively.

The Chinese government recently relaxed its infamous one child policy, brutally imposed since 1979 through forced abortions and sterilisations, and said that all couples would be allowed to have two children. Before, only members of China’s small ethnic minority groups and rural residents whose first child was a girl qualified.

Yet the relaxation may have come too late to boost fertility rates and rejuvenate China’s working age population, as the cost of rearing children has soared alongside incomes, especially in large urban centres.

“As [countries] get richer, fertility falls,” said Brian O’Keefe, lead author of the World Bank report. “Given China’s current fertility [rates], you may get a temporary uptick in people who wanted to have a second child having one, but we don’t see a big long-term impact there.”

Mr O’Keefe cited surveys showing that only a quarter of Chinese people eligible to have a second child would in fact do so.

The World Bank urged East Asian governments to embrace immigration as one tactic to counter falling population pressures, noting that more than 20 per cent of Australians and New Zealanders — and 40 per cent of Singaporeans — were immigrants.

“Demography is a powerful force in development but it is not destiny,” Mr O’Keefe said. “Through their policy choices, governments can help societies adapt to rapid ageing.”

 

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