China’s population has fallen for the fourth year in a row despite aggressive government efforts to persuade couples to have more children.
Official figures released Monday revealed that the world’s second most populous nation shrank in 2025, with total population dropping to 1.404 billion, approximately three million fewer people than the previous year.
China Birth Rate Plummets Despite Policy Reversals
A decade after ending the longtime one-child policy, Chinese authorities have implemented numerous strategies to boost the China birth rate, including cash subsidies, taxing condoms, eliminating taxes on matchmakers and daycare centers, and other incentives.
“China’s one-child policy will be remembered as one of the costliest lessons of misguided public policymaking,” the Brookings Institution stated in a 2016 report shortly after the policy was abolished.
The China birth rate has now slumped to its lowest level since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949 when Mao Zedong’s Communists seized power.
Just 5.63 births were recorded per 1,000 people in 2025, the weakest figure on record. Only 7.92 million babies were born last year, representing a dramatic fall of 1.62 million, or 17 percent, compared with 2024.
Structural Challenges Behind China Birth Rate Crisis
That drop eliminated a brief uptick seen the previous year, confirming China’s long term decline in births remains firmly entrenched after seven consecutive years of falling numbers through 2023.
Once the world’s most populous country, China was overtaken by regional rival India in 2023.
Families cite high living costs, intense academic pressure, and the expense of raising children in a fiercely competitive society as reasons for delaying or avoiding parenthood.
Experts note that addressing the China birth rate requires tackling fundamental structural issues.
“It’s these big structural issues which are much harder to tackle, whether it’s housing, work, getting a job, getting started in life, and expectations around education,” one demographic specialist explained. “It’s going to be difficult to make major changes in birth numbers until those are addressed.”
The declining China birth rate carries significant economic implications, threatening the nation’s workforce sustainability and economic growth trajectory as the population ages rapidly.
