Fast statistics: China's changing population strategy
India is on its way to becoming the world's most populous nation, overtaking China with almost 3 million more people at the middle of this year, while China's population reached its peak in 2022.
China's population started to drop last year for the first time in about six decades. There were 6.77 births per 1,000 people in 2022, down from 7.52 in 2021.
Many local governments have implemented policies aimed at encouraging births, including childcare subsidies and prolonged parental leave.
According to a report by United Nations Population Fund in 2018, demographic dividend contributed more than one-quarter to China's economic growth in recent years.
During this time, China took comprehensive measures to manage its population size, improve the quality of human capital and achieve a "low birth, low death and low growth rate."
Demographic dividend will continue to underpin economic growth for a long time to come, said Wang Qinchi, a researcher at the China Population and Development Research Center.
China now has a working-age population of about 963 million, exceeding the total amount of the working-age population of all developed countries in the world.
China is seeing a shift from a demographic dividend to a talent dividend, which is a reflection of the transition from high-speed development to high-quality development, said Wang Huiyao, president of the Center for China and Globalization, China's largest independent think tank.
The average years of schooling for the working-age population in China increased from 5.7 in 1982 to 10.9 in 2022. More than 240 million people had received college or higher education in China as of 2022.
