China’s birth rate continues to fall. “Last year’s 10.62 million births, down from 12.02 million in 2020, barely outnumbered the 10.14 million death,” according to the Wall Street Journal. China’s rate of births per female is now down to 1.3, well below the replace rate of 2.1. The country’s low population growth, both now and in the future, has caused worry about China’s future economic growth. That worry is much overdone, though it’s clear that China’s fastest growth is past.
Any nation’s economy depends simply on total population multiplied by production per person. That arithmetic is right but hides some important insights. Many people are not productive. That’s not an insult, but a recognition that children and many elderly people produce little of economic value. The arithmetic offers more insight if restated: A nation’s economy depends on total working population multiplied by production per working person.
In the immediate future, babies are a drain on the economy, not a boost. Every parent knows this. Twenty years from now, today’s baby will be important to the economy, but that is of little value to forecasters looking out a few years into the future.
China’s economic boom started when Deng Xiaoping too over political control in late 1978. He instituted numerous reforms including tolerance of entrepreneurial activity. That tolerance started with small steps but eventually led to massive industrialization, especially in coastal cities.
China’s rapid growth period came not from population growth but from population migration. The movement of people from poor rural areas to China’s cities may be the largest migration in human history. This migration shifted people from low productivity farm work to higher productivity factory work, and it was enabled by the government’s tolerance of entrepreneurship.
The rural farmers of Chinas were not bad farmers, but they produced relatively little because they lacked tools and, in the earlier years of communism, worked communally. The higher productivity of the urban factory employees led to higher wages, as businesses competed with one another for the available workers.
In previous articles I argued that due to current politics, China’s Economic Miracle Is Ending. Even before that, though, I had seen that China Is Too Mature For Rapid Economic Growth because the easiest opportunities for expansion had been used. The two points of view are compatible. The first is not necessary, while the second is inevitable.
In the coming years, China’s economic growth could rebound. A rebound would require the government to substantially relinquish the control over the economy that they have increasingly exercised in recent years. Even then, the growth would not match the ten percent rate achieved in many of the past 40 years. That’s not a forecast but rather a description of a possibility that seems unlikely at this point in time.
A nation does not need a growing population to have a high and growing standard of living per person, though a larger population will certainly swell the gross size of the economy.
OTTAWA – The parliamentary budget officer says the federal government likely failed to keep its deficit below its promised $40 billion cap in the last fiscal year.
However the PBO also projects in its latest economic and fiscal outlook today that weak economic growth this year will begin to rebound in 2025.
The budget watchdog estimates in its report that the federal government posted a $46.8 billion deficit for the 2023-24 fiscal year.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland pledged a year ago to keep the deficit capped at $40 billion and in her spring budget said the deficit for 2023-24 stayed in line with that promise.
The final tally of the last year’s deficit will be confirmed when the government publishes its annual public accounts report this fall.
The PBO says economic growth will remain tepid this year but will rebound in 2025 as the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts stimulate spending and business investment.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says the level of food insecurity increased in 2022 as inflation hit peak levels.
In a report using data from the Canadian community health survey, the agency says 15.6 per cent of households experienced some level of food insecurity in 2022 after being relatively stable from 2017 to 2021.
The reading was up from 9.6 per cent in 2017 and 11.6 per cent in 2018.
Statistics Canada says the prevalence of household food insecurity was slightly lower and stable during the pandemic years as it fell to 8.5 per cent in the fall of 2020 and 9.1 per cent in 2021.
In addition to an increase in the prevalence of food insecurity in 2022, the agency says there was an increase in the severity as more households reported moderate or severe food insecurity.
It also noted an increase in the number of Canadians living in moderately or severely food insecure households was also seen in the Canadian income survey data collected in the first half of 2023.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct 16, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says manufacturing sales in August fell to their lowest level since January 2022 as sales in the primary metal and petroleum and coal product subsectors fell.
The agency says manufacturing sales fell 1.3 per cent to $69.4 billion in August, after rising 1.1 per cent in July.
The drop came as sales in the primary metal subsector dropped 6.4 per cent to $5.3 billion in August, on lower prices and lower volumes.
Sales in the petroleum and coal product subsector fell 3.7 per cent to $7.8 billion in August on lower prices.
Meanwhile, sales of aerospace products and parts rose 7.3 per cent to $2.7 billion in August and wood product sales increased 3.8 per cent to $3.1 billion.
Overall manufacturing sales in constant dollars fell 0.8 per cent in August.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2024.
