Full life-cycle focus

China's population development strategy is aligned with strategies to enhance people's well-being and talent training in terms of the goals, approaches and pathways. By pursuing a high-quality and multipronged population development plan, China has improved people's well-being and the basic public service system, while addressing the challenges of the demographic changes.

In July 2024, the third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China adopted a resolution on comprehensively deepening reform to advance Chinese modernization, which calls for instituting a system for the provision of "full life-cycle population services to all "and makes the system the basic requirement for population development policies.

Many countries have implemented various subsidy policies to cope with problems such as population aging and declining fertility rates. But experiences have shown that subsidy policies alone are not always effective, and a comprehensive policy package involving economic and social goals, and macro and micro incentives should be put in place to address the problems.

In a bid to have the desired fertility rate, China proposes to build a childbirth-friendly society and continuously improve and optimize its population policies in response to the country's demographic changes.

Fertility rates, or the number of children per woman, around the world vary widely, from as high as five in Burundi to as low as 0.8 in the Republic of Korea and close to one in China. In developing countries, declines in fertility rates have become a definite trend. Many countries with high fertility, however, have experienced failure in restoring their fertility rates to 2.1. Despite that, there are lessons from some countries showing that the very high Human Development Index (above 0.8), coupled with a high level of gender equality, will bring about a turning point for fertility rate recovery.

China's HDI has reached 0.79 and is progressing toward the level that allowing fertility to increase, and gender equality in China is also highly recognized in the world. The HDI measures three factors: per capita gross national income (GNI), education and health. From 1990 to the present, China is the only country to have moved from low to high human development, primarily driven by the rapid growth of its per capita GNI. As economic growth enters a new normal with stabilized per capita GNI growth, improving human development will require significant advancements in education and health. This is in line with the comprehensive improvement of the population quality, which serves as one of the foundations for building a childbirth-friendly society.

Population aging and the decline in fertility rate are the main challenges that the population support policy system aims to tackle. These are not two separate issues, and need to be viewed from the "full life-cycle" perspective. That's why improving population development strategies are aligned with the goals of providing universal and adequate coverage of basic public services for all people.

In population dynamics, there is an "echo effect". Today's aging population is the echo of a long period of low fertility rates in the past. In this process, a baby boom, followed by a surge in demand for schooling, employment and retirement, ends up with a rising proportion of the elderly in the total population.

The "echo effect" has significant implications for the future. When making decisions for population support policies, elderly care, employment and education demands in the future must also be factored in. To encourage childbirth, policies should not just focus on childbirth itself but should provide support for all subsequent stages. A full life-cycle approach can ultimately achieve a more desired level of fertility.

Employment is a key factor that cannot be ignored. China's employment challenges have gradually evolved into structural contradictions, which are evidenced by the mismatch between job vacancies and unemployed workers. While constraints on overall employment are easing, structural contradictions are expected to continue to grow.

Various factors contribute to structural contradictions. For example, technological advancements and industrial restructuring require new skills, which may lead to lay-off of some workers or the need for training. Another factor is institutional defects, such as the household registration system and policies that hinder labor mobility.

Population structure is also a factor that leads to structural employment contradictions. Securing employment requires functional human capital, a combination of technical skills and cognitive abilities. Human capital can be acquired in two ways: education, which gives an advantage to the younger workers who are more educated; and work experience, where the older workers are more favored as experience can only be gained through working. But the middle-aged workforce is best positioned to integrate the strengths of both.

However, China's labor force is seeing a key demographic shift, where both ends of the age spectrum are expanding. As a result, the age structure imbalance of human capital will pose greater employment challenges, where both young and older workers tend to encounter greater difficulties in finding a good jobs.

Therefore, the population structure will have impacts on future employment, and addressing employment issues — particularly structural employment contradictions — also involve employment assistance to the two age groups: the young and the old.

China has become an aged society and is expected to be a highly aged society by around 2032. This means that China's first step-modernization by 2035 will be accompanied by rapid population aging and characterized by the feature of "growing old before getting rich".

China's decline in fertility rate and population aging are occurring before the modernization goal is accomplished, which poses new difficulties and challenges that must be proactively addressed. Therefore, efforts need to be made to slow down the population aging process by increasing fertility rates.

Meanwhile, it is necessary to adapt to the aging trends in the short term and to tap into the potential of the elderly population, both as a labor force and as consumers.

China's economy has great growth potential, which provides sufficient resilience to address the challenges from "growing old before getting rich" and improve elderly care. It is estimated that China's elderly population will continue to increase from around 14 percent to 24 percent before 2035, during which time China's potential of economic growth will be significantly higher compared with other countries at about the same stage of development. Therefore, economic development must be leveraged to support the population development and the basic public service system.

China's rising dependency ratio has reduced the demographic dividend and brought about some changes. Specifically, while the old-age dependency ratio is increasing, the child dependency ratio has declined over a certain period, which provides a window of opportunity in strengthening population supports.

For example, the falling number of primary schools and kindergartens has freed up relevant resources. This means that preschool and primary school education need to be better coordinated, and the years of compulsory education needs to be appropriately extended. And more resources are needed to boost elderly care.

The author is chief expert at the National High-end Think Tank under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

Contact the editor at editor@chinawatch.cn.