Birth rate in China drops to lowest level since 1949

BEIJING: The research revealed that China’s birth rate has dropped in 2019 to its lowest level since the Communist country was founded in 1949.

The research added that an aging society and shrinking workforce would pile pressure on a slowing economy.

To avoid a demographic crisis, the government relaxed its one-child policy in 2016 to allow people to have two children, but the change has not resulted in more pregnancies.

In 2019, the birth rate stood at 10.48 per 1,000 people, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released on Friday.

The number of births has now fallen for three consecutive years. There were 14.65 million babies born in 2019, after 15.23 million in 2018 and 17.23 million in 2017.

China’s population stood at 1.4 billion by the end of 2019, increasing by 4.67 million from the year before.

In its report, said that the Chinese newspaper South China Morning Post, China’s institutional statistics, the National Bureau of Statistics,  the birth rate of children across China has dropped to 14 million.

Surprisingly, the birth rate in China has started to decline at a time when the government has abolished the one-child policy.

The Chinese government terminated the one-child policy in 2016, allowing parents to have more than one child before Chinese parents were allowed to have only one child.

Although the government has not yet announced a new and stricter policy due to the decline in birth rates for the second year in a row, it is likely that if this trend continues, the government will announce a stringent policy on raising children’s rates.