The Impact of Population Aging and Fertility

Decline on Society

SB822138 Wang Ye Yao

SC021774 CHEONG HOU CHUN

SC019532 WONG IEOK LONG

 Population aging is a change in the age structure of the population, which is an

inevitable product of social economic development affecting the process of population

development and is a necessary demographic development process in the process of

declining population fertility. At the same time, fertility decline and population aging

are bound to have a profound impact on social and economic development and future

demographic changes.

As a developing country with a large population, the rapid decline of fertility in a

short period of time makes the process of population aging in China different in some

aspects from both developed and other developing countries. The process of changing

the type of population reproduction to low births, low deaths, and low natural growth

in developed countries has been achieved gradually along with industrialization and

modernization, and the decline in their population mortality and population fertility

rates has been gradual, with the process of population aging being slow. In contrast,

many developing countries, including China, have effectively controlled the incidence

of infectious and epidemic diseases in a relatively short period of time after World

War II due to the introduction of advanced medical technologies and medicines. Rapid

improvements in medical and health care were achieved at a relatively low level of

socioeconomic development, resulting in a significant and sustained decline in

population mortality. At the same time, however, the population fertility rate remained

at a high level because socioeconomic development was still underdeveloped and

fertility attitudes had not yet changed. After the 1970s, China became one of the
countries with the fastest demographic transition in the world, as the fertility level

began to decline rapidly due to the vigorous implementation of family planning

policies, which inevitably led to a decline in the proportion of young children in the

total population and an increase in the proportion of older people, i.e., population

aging.

The family planning policy mainly controls the excessive growth of population

number, and cannot solve all the population problems. Population aging is a change in

the age structure of the population, and the two reflect different demographic

problems, but the two problems are interlinked, and a decline in the proportion of

children in the population will lead to a corresponding increase in the proportion of

older people. However, population aging is an inevitable demographic change that

accompanies industrialization and modernization, and must be taken seriously

because its impact on social economic development is becoming increasingly evident.

According to the data of the seventh census, the proportion of the elderly population

over sixty years old in China has reached almost 20%. And from 2016 to 2020, the

number of population decline in China has reached more than 500, behind this data

shows that the birth rate has fallen below the death rate and our demographic

inflection point is already early.

And China's fertility rate is not only declining fast compared to developed

countries, but also fast compared to many international countries that have
implemented family planning, so China's population is aging ahead of the level of

economic development, and is aging before it gets rich. Not only compared with

developed countries, China is old before it is rich, but also compared with some

developing countries, the result is the same. This indicates that China's population

aging is ahead of the economic development level due to the decline of fertility rate

prompted by the family planning policy when the economic and social development

has not reached the corresponding level.

There are several main reasons for the decline in fertility rate, with the high

housing price, which has seriously depressed the willingness of young couples living

in cities to have children. The second is the high cost of education. A family living in

first and second tier cities have to spend at least half a million or more to raise a child

from birth to adulthood. In the face of competition in the workplace and family

choices, the pressure on modern women has increased exponentially, and childbirth

has become a crossroads for most women's career planning. With the development of

the Internet, the negativity of marriage is spreading more and more widely in society,

and the ideology of contemporary young people has changed, and many "marriage

fearers" and "non-marriages" have emerged, but with the introduction of the divorce

cooling-off period policy, young people are forced to. However, with the introduction

of the divorce cooling-off period policy, young people are more and more afraid of

marriage, and the decline in the marriage rate has a direct impact on the decline in

fertility.
 From a social perspective, the social impact of declining fertility and aging is

also a problem, such as social security, the future social workforce is bound to

decline, in other words, the workforce will support more and more people who lack or

lose the ability to work, the pensions paid are far from being able to support the

amount of pensions to be received, forming an inverse phenomenon, which requires

the state treasury to continuously allocate subsidies, thus it will require constant

subsidies from the state treasury, thus putting heavy pressure on the public pension

system. Secondly, the reduction of fertility rate will directly affect the scale of market

demand in China, and thus directly affect the economic growth. The next paper will

discuss the social problems brought by the declining fertility rate and aging from

different perspectives.

Unlike other countries, the fertility rate in China has declined to a large extent

due to policy rather than a natural decline in line with the level of socioeconomic

development. According to the article "Fertility Decline and Economic Development

Paradigm Transition," the demographic transition in developed countries has taken at

least a century, but China has only experienced it for about 15 years. The result of this

sudden fertility decline is that China will face enormous population aging pressure.

The then young workforce will be unable to perform high intensity physical labor

after 10-15 years due to declining physical condition. As a direct consequence of the

fertility policy, the fertility rate will decline and the number of young and young-adult
laborers will decrease, resulting in a labor shortage in many industries that cannot

recruit as many workers as before. However, due to the large size of China's territory,

the time period and degree of fertility decline varies from region to region, and the

young labor force in regions with slower fertility decline will flow to regions with

faster fertility decline, resulting in this problem being covered up and ignored.

In conclusion, population aging and declining fertility rate are the major issues

on contemporary China, which are influencing the social structure and growth of

economy not only in the current society also affecting china’s development in the

future. Population ageing ahs change the social structure of china, over 20% of the

population are elderly and the number is inclining in the trend, so there are another

issues appear which are the increasing cost of pension and insufficient workforce, due

to the trend of population ageing Chinese government need to input more resources

on the pension, on the other hand, when most of the population retired the economic

growth will be stagnate so it will lead to an impasse eventually. Therefore, China’s

ageing population is described as “old before it is rich” even if China has a distinct

growth in economy and improvement on compensation. In our research, we find that

decline of fertility and ageing population are closely related, while the result of

declining fertility is mainly relating to the government policy such as the “One child

policy” which has limited the growth of population, also changing people’s view on

fertility in the society, therefore, many young couples choose to not have children or

have only one child, on the other hand, the tuition fee and money used to breed a child
are the challenges to the parents so many couples don’t want to have a child or even

not marriage. Under the implement of policy and changing social environment China

is undoubtedly facing the dilemma of lower fertility and it will be a consequence of

extra spending on health care, pension and inadequate workforce in the coming future.
References:

CangPing.W., Peng.D., (1990). “The Aging of Population in China”.

United Nations. (1988). “Economic and Social Implications of Population Aging”.

XiaoChun.Q., (1994). “Population Research Supplement”A Study of the

Consequences of Fertility Decline in China: Theoretical Hypotheses and Research

Ideas.

Zhai Zhenwu Zhao Menghan. (2013). “Fertility Decline and Economic Development

Paradigm Transition”(生育率下降与经济发展模式转型). Renkou yu jingji, 1, 3–9.