ABSTRACT
China’s hyper-economic growth in the past three decades has occurred in a period of rapid demographic transition that is highly favorable to savings, investment, and human capital improvement. Before the early 1970s, the high birth rates and falling death rates had contributed to over two decades of rapid population growth, which was only temporarily interrupted by the 1959–61 famine. After the government started family planning programs in the 1970s, fertility rates started falling quickly and the baby boomers from earlier decades joined the labor force in waves. The result is a three-decade decline of the overall dependency ratio and an expanding labor force that has grown faster than the population (Figure 7.1). This favorable demographic change co-occurred with the market-oriented reform that triggered the economy’s takeoff. China s dependency ratios, 1950–2050 https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203496794/4eb9bb94-17ef-41f3-9a46-7c56b93c9d08/content/fig7_1_C.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> Notes: Child dependency ratio = population age 0–14 to population age 15–64; Elderly dependency ratio = population age 65 and above to population age 15–64; Total dependency ratio = (population age 0–14 and population age 65+) to population age 15–64. Source: United Nations (2009).
