China’s population grew older and richer: policy lessons for some African countries

Lauren Johnston

FOR decades China was the world’s most populous country. But that’s changed. Its population has peaked, and is now falling.

The country has achieved high levels of economic growth for four decades, reducing poverty and raising per capita incomes. Between 1978 and 2018 China’s economy grew by an average of 9.8 per cent per annum. Today it is the second biggest economy in the world after the US.

China’s demographic profile has played a key role in its development. A high number of births in the 1950s and 1960s, alongside gains in public health and basic education, meant that, from the 1970s, there was a boom in China’s working age population size and share. This is estimated to have contributed some 15% of China’s growth over the period 1980 to 2000.

China capitalised on its demographic profile through policies which captured that working-age population.

I’ve been studying the