中国人口何时达到高峰？那要看你问谁

世界上最大的中国人口何时达到高峰？人口统计学家说，这一点正在迅速接近高峰。卫生部本月宣布，人口将在未来三年达到峰值，然后开始减少。其他人认为这可能会发生得更早。When will China’s population, the world’s largest, peak? It’s a point that demographers say is fast approaching. The country’s health department announced this month that the population will peak and then begin to shrink in the next three years. Others think it could happen much sooner.

“转折点就在拐角处，”北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校的人口统计学家Yong Cai说。“如果今年年底报告人口下降，我不会感到惊讶。”“The turning point is right around the corner,” says Yong Cai, a demographer at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “I won’t be surprised if population decline is reported at the end of this year.”

在经历了多年的出生率下降之后，国家卫生委员会在8月初在线发表的一篇文章中写道，中国的人口增长已经显著放缓，并将在2023年至2025年之间开始下降。根据上月发表在一份同行评议的中国期刊《社会科学期刊》上的一项估计，北京人民大学的人口统计学家Wei Chen表示，得出的结论是，根据2020年发布的全国人口普查数据，中国人口可能已经在2021达到峰值。After years of falling birth rates, the National Health Commission wrote in an article published online in early August that China’s population growth has slowed significantly and will start to decline between 2023 and 2025. According to an estimate published last month in a peer-reviewed Chinese journal, Social Science Journal1, Wei Chen, a demographer at Renmin University in Beijing, concluded that, on the basis of national census data released in 2020, China’s population might have already peaked in 2021.

在过去十年中，中国政府为提高出生率做出了重大努力，包括扭转长达数十年的人口控制政策。人口统计学家说，年轻一代对为人父母的态度的转变也导致了增长放缓。他们说，这一趋势可能会持续下去，老龄化将成为面临的一大挑战。The Chinese government has made significant efforts to boost birth rates in the past decade, including reversing the country’s decades-long population-control policy. Demographers say a shifting attitude towards parenthood among younger generations is also contributing to slowed growth. The trend is likely to persist, and ageing will become a major challenge for the country, they say.

去年，中国总人口仅增加了48万人，仅略高于14.1亿，自然增长率（出生和死亡人数之差）接近于零。出生率连续第五年下降到每千人7.5个孩子，2021只有1000万婴儿出生，是1949年以来的最低水平。Last year, China’s total population increased by only 480,000 people, to just more than 1.41 billion, with a natural growth rate — the difference between the numbers of births and deaths — of close to zero. The country’s birth rate declined for the fifth consecutive year to 7.5 births per thousand people, and only 10 million babies were born in 2021, the lowest since 1949.

20世纪60年代，在中国大饥荒之后，中国迎来了婴儿潮。为了限制人口的快速增长，政府在1980年推出了独生子女政策，限制大多数家庭只生一个孩子。该战略降低了中国的人口增长率，从1970年的2.5%下降到2000年的0.7%。但该政策直到2016年才结束。包括北京大学的Jianxin Li在内的许多人口统计学家认为，该政策的结束来得太晚，无法扭转中国急剧下降的生育率。Jianxin Li早在1997年就预测，如果人口控制政策保持不变，中国人口可能在2024年达到峰值。In the 1960s, China saw a major baby boom after the Great Chinese Famine. In a bid to limit rapid population growth, the government launched a one-child policy in 1980 that restricted most families to having only a single child. The strategy brought down the country’s population growth rate, which dropped from 2.5% in 1970 to 0.7% in 2000. But the policy did not end until 2016. Many demographers, including Jianxin Li at Peking University in Beijing, think the policy ending came too late to reverse the country’s crashing fertility rate. Li projected as early as 1997 that China’s population could peak in 2024 if the population-control policy remained in place.

研究人员表示，中国的出生率下降甚至在独生子女政策结束后仍在继续，因为人们对婚姻和生育的态度发生了变化，年轻人推迟了这些事件。北京中国人民大学的人口统计学家Jian Song表示，随着越来越多的女性接受高等教育并从事有薪工作，她们的家庭开始比上一代晚。Researchers say China’s falling birth rate has continued even after the one-child policy ended because of shifting attitudes towards marriage and childbearing and young people delaying these events. With more women pursuing higher education and taking on paid jobs, they are starting families later in life than previous generations, says Jian Song, a demographer at the Renmin University of China in Beijing.

数据显示，2020年，男性和女性第一次结婚的平均年龄分别为29岁和28岁左右。2010年，第一次结婚时，女性为24岁，男性为26岁。大多数人选择在结婚后生孩子，而晚年生孩子意味着女性的孩子往往较少。Data show that, in 2020, the average age of men and women at their first marriage was around 29 and 28 years old, respectively. In 2010, women were 24 years old and men were 26 when entering their first marriage. In China, most people choose to have children after they’re married, and having children later in life means that women tend to have fewer children, Song adds.

中国上海交通大学的社会学家Yang Shen表示，年轻一代一旦做好了经济准备，就倾向于更加谨慎地结婚和生育。“今天大多数年轻人仍然希望有一个家庭，但来自住房和儿童保育的经济压力会严重阻碍他们这样做，”。Younger generations tend to enter marriage and childbearing more carefully, once they are financially prepared, says Yang Shen, a sociologist at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. “Most young people today still want to have a family, but economic pressure from housing and childcare can seriously deter them from doing so,” Shen says.

研究发现，与2015年同期相比，2020年最后两个月出生的婴儿数量减少了45%，这表明2020年初在中国爆发的新冠肺炎疫情影响了夫妇是否生育的决定。Research has found that 45% fewer babies were born in the last two months of 2020 than the same period in 2015, suggesting the COVID-19 outbreak, which hit China in early 2020, affected couples’ decisions on whether to have children.

进入生育年龄的女性人数减少加剧了中国的“出生率下降海啸”。1990年代出生的婴儿数量比1980年代少得多。这一代妇女现在正处于生育年龄，但其子女总数将比上一代少。China’s “tsunami of falling birth rate” is exacerbated by the smaller number of women entering childbearing age. The number of babies born in the 1990s was much smaller than in the 1980s. That generation of women is now at childbearing age, but will have fewer children in total than the previous generation.

与此同时，出生于20世纪60年代的婴儿潮一代正在步入60多岁。目前，超过18%的中国人口超过60岁。预计到2050年，这一比例将增至三分之一，达到3亿人。At the same time, the baby boomers born in the 1960s are reaching their 60s. Currently, more than 18% of China’s population is over 60 years old. The proportion is expected to increase to one-third by 2050, reaching 300 million people.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-02304-8

References

1. Wei, C.     Soc. Sci. J.     https://https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/21.1012.C.20220715.1932.002.html     (2022).

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