China Population Growth Falls to Lowest Rate in Decades

China says its population grew to 1.41 billion in the decade ending in 2020, its lowest rate of growth since imposing a strict one child per family policy in the 1980s.   

The National Bureau of Statistics announced Tuesday that China added 72 million people between 2010 and 2020, an increase of 5.38%, with annual growth averaging 0.53%, a decline of 0.04% rate from the previous decade.   The world’s most populous nation is facing a worrying trend of declining working-age citizens coupled with a rising number of aging retirees, a trend brought on by the government’s mandatory birth limits as a means of controlling population growth.   Chinese leaders eased those limits in 2015, but the birth rate has continued its steady decline due to the huge cost of living, a lack of decent housing and people more focused on maintaining their careers than starting families.