Over 5% of Chinese women remain childless at 49

Around 5.2 percent of Chinese women who had reached the age of 49 remained childless in 2020, according to a study released by the China Population and Development Research Center on Wednesday.

The rate is lower than the 11 percent from the United States and 19 percent from European Union countries, said the study.

It added that well-educated women, as well as those living in urban areas, northeastern provinces and regions seeing extremely low fertility levels, were more likely to have never given birth by 49.

“With accelerating urbanization, development of higher education and continuous delays in marriage and childbearing, China’s lifetime childlessness rate is expected to continue rising in the future,” said the study.

It said that the rising trend of lifetime childlessness could further push down China’s overall fertility level and its birthrates, and impact the realization of an appropriate fertility level.

Researchers of the study call for paying attention to the phenomenon and devising response strategies in advance.

For the first time in decades, China has fewer people than it did at the start of last year, according to official figures released in January.

The world’s most populous country has worried for years about an aging population’s effect on the economy and society, but the population was not expected to go into decline for almost a decade.

The National Bureau of Statistics reported that the country had 850,000 fewer people at the end of 2022 than the previous year. The tally includes only the population of mainland China, excluding Hong Kong and Macau as well as foreign residents.

In South Korea, recent data shows that births kept falling for the 89th straight month in April, boosting concerns about a demographic cliff.

The number of newborn babies was 18,484 in April, down 12.7 percent from the same month of last year, according to Statistics Korea. It marked the lowest April figure since relevant data began to be compiled in 1981.

The newborns have been on the decline since December 2015 as more young people delayed or gave up on having children due to economic difficulties such as high housing prices and education costs. The low birth rate fueled worry about the demographic cliff, which refers to a sharp fall in the heads of households eventually leading to a consumption cliff. MDT/Agencies