You would have thought with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, China wouldn’t be too worried about the number of people living there declining a bit.

But as it faces the challenges of an economic slowdown and an ageing society, Beijing is urging families to have more babies to stop a population decline that’s been recorded for a second year in a row. 

But is a falling birth rate necessarily a bad thing? 

First published 26 February 2024. 

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Stuart Gietel-Basten, Professor of Social Science and Public Policy at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology