Friday, May 6, 2011

China's birth dearth

Is the fertility rate in China only 1.3?
To keep a society sustainable, the birth rate needs to be kept around at 2.3 children per female inhabitant. But all the objective surveys, including that of the 2000 census and the 1% sampling survey of 2001, show that since the mid-1990’s the birth rate in China has been stuck around 1.3.
....
China is set to repeat Japan’s economic recession experience of the 1990s. The difference is Japan became rich before growing old, while China is growing old before even getting rich.
 Demography remains the great untold story.

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