China’s population grew 5.38% in last 10 years to 1.4 billion
Beijing, May 11 (EFE).- China’s population grew by 5.38 percent in the last 10 years to reach 1.4 billion inhabitants, the National Bureau of Statistics announced on Tuesday.
The total number of inhabitants, according to the 2020 census, the first since 2010, is 1.4 billion against the 1.3 billion recorded in the 2010 census.
The latest census reflects an average annual growth of 0.53 percent in the last decade compared to 0.57 percent in the 2000-2010 period and 1.07 percent between 1990 and 2000.
These figures are a far cry from those recorded in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when China’s population grew at an annual average rate of 2.1 percent.
Despite continuing to expand, the country’s population is also aging, which suggests that in the coming years, if not in 2022 itself, its unstoppable growth for fifty years will be reversed.
Data from the 2020 census shows that the population is growing more slowly than in the past.
It had increased by 5.84 percent between 2000 and 2010 compared to 5.38 percent in the following decade and 11.6 percent in the previous one.
The degree of growth of different age groups also reveals that the country’s working age population is continuing to decline.
The population of those below 14 years of age continued to grow and now represents 17.95 percent of the total.
It is, however, only 1.35 percent more than what it was in 2010.
Citizens between the ages of 15 and 59 years stand at 894 million, 6.79 percent less than ten years ago, when they had already declined by 6.29 percent compared to the 2000 census.
There are now 264 million Chinese aged 60 years and above compared to 177.6 million in 2010, while those over 65 grew to 190 million, compared to 118.8 million ten years ago.
Data on the adult and child population is essential to determine the retirement and birth policies of the Chinese government, which still bans couples from having more than two children, a limit that will probably be lifted soon.
The census reflects an average family size of 2.6 in China compared to 3.1 in 2010, a decline the NBS attributes to the growing mobility of the population.
More than 7 million people worked to gather data for the 2020 census, which used advanced telematics systems and digital technologies for the first time to collect demographic variables. EFE
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