BEIJING — China reported that it had 15.23 million births in 2018, the lowest since 1961 when 11.87 million births were recorded, according to financial services firm Wind Info.
According to the Associated Press, citing National Bureau of Statistics data, this puts China's current population at 1.395 billion for 2018.
According to Business Insider, when countries fail to have enough children and have an increasing elderly population, the economy usually underperforms.
China's one-child policy, carried out for more than 35 years between 1979 and 2015, resulted in an artificially slowed population growth that favored males.
This has led to an over abundance of senior citizens with a shrinking young worker base to support them.
Beijing is aware of the coming demographics time bomb, but so far has only used marketing and advertising to address falling fertility rates.
