The change and implication of population momentum in China: national and provincial evidence

Zhuoyan Mao, National Research Institute for Family Planning of China

Nowadays, It's estimated the driving force for the coming population growth in China will mainly be population growth momentum, which is the crucial consideration to stabilizing current fertility policy by China’s government. However few studies so far have discussed about China’s population growth momentum in a systematic, accurate, and quantified manner rather than a simply labeling it as the huge one. With collecting and calculating national and provincial data from 1953 to 2000, the paper gets very significant findings as follow: (1). The national population positive momentum has been obviously falling down during recent 50 years. (2) Since the 1980s, the urban and rural population positive momentums are declining sharply although the rural population momentum was significantly higher than the one of the urban. (3).Population momentum below 30 years of age keeps unchanged, but the one between 30 and 60 years of age has been negative and the force of population growth has been from the population above 60 years old since 2000. (4) From 1982 to 2000, positive momentum of every province dropped at very high speeds. In 2000, 70% of all provinces’ positive momentums are weak, and population momentums of 4 provinces, such as Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Liaoning, have been negative. These findings remind that national and provincial population momentums have challenged our traditional option. The inherent laws of population momentum tell that we need to provide against a rainy day, otherwise we have to face many unpredicted consequences in near future. China's TFR has been under the replacement level for almost twenty years since 1990s , so it is time to consider how to change the fertility policy.