The Graying of China

Ever since the British economist Thomas Malthus raised an alarm about unchecked population growth in the eighteenth century, people have had nightmares about too many people crowding the planet. In Malthus' own lifetime the world population reached one billion; it passed the two-billion mark early in the twentieth century, and in 2000 stood at more than six billion. The combination of a soaring population and a rising individual consumption of food, water, and natural resources has appeared to strain the earth's capacity to sustain human life. A recent study released by Cornell University anxiously warns that the twelve billion people estimated to live in 2010 will suffer miserably.

Nothing seems to illustrate the threatening nature of prolific population growth better than China's experience. Presently inhabited by more than 1.2 billion people, China has the largest population in the world- one-fifth of the global total. Every year, the country adds another twelve million to its total. In the late 1970s, however, the gloomy prospects of overpopulation prompted successive Chinese leaders to carry out a comprehensive program of family planning. At the heart of these efforts stood the "one-child-per-family" policy. Under this program, a sophisticated system rewarded those who observed the policy and penalized those who did not.

The efficient implementation of birth control policies caused a rapid and drastic decline in fertility: from roughly 6 children per woman in 1965 to 1.8 children in 2004. Simultaneously, China's population witnessed a decline in mortality that resulted in a dramatic increase in life expectancy. The conjunction of a shrinking youthful population with rising life expectancy, however, poses an entirely new sort of demographic danger for the next century, when China will become a land with most aged population in the world.

China's population is shrinking and graying. By the end of the twenty-first century, it will have a labor force with a greater proportion of older than younger people. The main consequence will be the huge burden placed on those of working age. Too many old, retired people will require family and financial support, and too few youngsters will be around to provide it. Moreover, if current trends continue unchecked, China's age structure will become increasingly less favorable to an economy that currently relies for much of its extensive growth on the labor-intensive industries.

China's experience is not unique. Indeed, so widespread is the phenomenon of shrinking and graying populations that one demographer dubbed it "a world population implosion". Until recent;y, however, aging productive populations have been an issue only in highly developed countries. For example, the increase in the proportion of the elderly to the working population has been rising in western Europe for at least 150 years, causing considerable social and economic concerns. Nevertheless, China is aging much faster than any comparable society has ever done before. While it took France 115 years for the proportion of older people to double from 7 to 14 percent, it will take China only 27 years to achieve the same increase, between 2000 and 2027. Unlike western Europe and Japan, which have rich, old, and shrinking populations, developing societies like China are in peril of growing old before growing rich.