China's Demographic Cliff

I've written before about the demographic problems facing China because of the one-child policy, but didn't have numbers to illustrate the decline. This article at CNBC outlines the numbers:

Sanyal (who defines working age as 20-59) predicts China's workforce will decline modestly from 853.7 million in 2015 to 848.9 million by 2020, but then will then drop sharply to 781.8 million by 2030, 743 million by 2040 and 650.9 million in 2050.

In December, China's top legislature approved a loosening of the country's controversial one-child policy that was introduced in the 1970s in an effort to address demographic challenges including a shrinking labor force, rising elderly population and male-female imbalances.

However, Sanyal says a large decline in the Chinese workforce is now unavoidable irrespective of the removal of the one-child policy.

Due to a skewed gender ratio, China no longer has enough child-bearing age women to stabilize its population, he said. In the mainland, there are almost 118 boys born for every 100 girls.

The decline has already started--the article notes that China's workforce had declined for the second year in a row last year.

This is probably one of the biggest stories of the decade. It raises the question: will China grow rich before it grows old?