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What China’s Falling Birthrate Means for Its Economy – Barron's

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People walk along a street in Beijing on March 5, 2021.


Noel Celis / AFP via Getty Images

The world’s most populous country has a population problem. It’s shrinking.

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It’s a serious issue with numerous social and economic ramifications, but there is irony as well. After China’s population boom in the 1950s to 1970s Mao era—nearly doubling in a generation—demographers realized the situation was untenable. Mao’s successor Deng Xiaoping in 1979 then implemented the one-child policy.

It’s this controversial change of course that is coming back to bite China. China saw a 15% decline in the number of newborns registered in 2020, according to the country’s Ministry of Public Security.

Alongside its aging population, that means it is on a path toward a declining workforce that will not be able to support pensions and other social programs.

“China’s falling fertility rate will accelerate population aging, a process which is already well under way and creating a headwind for growth as the size of the labor force continues to shrink in absolute terms,” Albert Park, head and chair professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, told Barron’s.

“China can address the growth challenges posed by population aging by relaxing its immigration policy, extending retirement age and investing more to make older workers more productive, establishing comprehensive healthcare and pension systems that support better health (and productivity) over the life cycle, and reduce the social costs of population aging, he said. China can also invest in infrastructure, innovation, and education that will support steady growth in productivity, he said.

China has not much budged on its notoriously stingy immigration policy, doling out a mere 1,576 “green cards” in 2016, the last year for which numbers are public. By contrast, the U.S. grants over 1 million each year.

As for the retirement age, China has yet to actually raise it but last year created a firestorm when it announced it would soon begin to do so “in a gradual manner,” without providing further details.

China relaxed the one-child policy in 2013 for some families and began allowing all families to have two children in 2016, in hopes of encouraging a baby boom. The results were underwhelming.

China last month released a proposal urging its northeastern provinces to study the possibility of completely abolishing limits on the number of children families can have. The region—China’s struggling rust belt—has the lowest fertility rates in the country. The study, authorities said, would inform a decision the National Health Commission would make for the region, and possibly the country, on abolishing birth restrictions.

China is experiencing what other rich countries have encountered. It’s widely known that as countries become wealthier, woman have fewer children. But other issues are at play. In 2019, China’s marriage hit its lowest rate in 14 years. The birthrate in 2019 was the lowest since modern China was founded in 1949.

The math seems not in China’s favor. It takes roughly two children per family to maintain a population level. China’s rate is currently 1.5.

But not all experts see the situation as so dire.

“I do not think at all about why the fertility rate is what it is, only about its impact on the future of the economy,” Barbara M. Fraumeni, a Special-Term Professor of the Central University for Economics and Finance in Beijing, told Barron’s.

“In future years, the contribution to economic growth of young Chinese as they enter the workforce is expected to increase relative to that of current working age individuals,” Fraumeni said, based on data she and colleagues have analyzed along with the China Center for Human Capital and Labor Market Research of the Central University of Finance and Economics.

Tanner Brown covers China for Barron’s and MarketWatch.

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Economy

Bank of Canada walking a ‘tightrope’ as analysts forecast inflation jump in February

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Economists expect inflation reaccelerated to 3.1% in February

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People banking on an interest rate cut may not like the direction Canadian inflation is heading if analyst expectations prove correct.

Bloomberg analysts expect inflation to reaccelerate to 3.1 per cent in February when Statistics Canada releases its latest consumer price index (CPI) data on Tuesday, following a slowdown to 2.9 per cent year over year in January.

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Article contentCPI core-trim and core-median, the measures the Bank of Canada is most focused on, are forecast to come in unchanged from the previous month at 3.3 per cent and 3.4 per cent, respectively.

Policymakers made it clear when they held interest rates on March 6 that inflation remained too widespread and persistent for them to begin cutting.

Here’s what economists are saying about tomorrow’s inflation numbers and what they mean for interest rates.

‘Can’t afford missteps’: Desjardins Financial

The Bank of Canada’s preferred measures “have become biased,” Royce Mendes, managing director and head of macro strategy, and Tiago Figueiredo, macro strategist, at Desjardins Financial, said in a note on March 18, “likely overestimating the true underlying inflation rate.”

They estimated the central bank’s preferred measures of core-trim and core-median inflation are overemphasizing items in the CPI basket of goods whose prices are rising more than five per cent. After adjusting for the “biases,” they estimate the bank’s measures are more in the neighbourhood of three per cent — which is at the top of the bank’s inflation target range of one to three per cent.

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Article content“If the Bank of Canada ignores our findings, officials risk leaving monetary policy restrictive for too long, inflicting unnecessary pain on households and businesses,” they said.

Markets have significantly scaled back their rate-cut expectations based on the central bank’s previous comments. Royce and Figueiredo are now calling for a first cut in June and three cuts of 25 basis points for the year.

“Given the tightrope Canadian central bankers are walking, they can’t afford any missteps,” they said.

‘Inflict too much damage’: National Bank

The danger exists that interest rates could end up hurting Canada’s economy more than intended, Matthieu Arseneau, Jocelyn Paquet and Daren King, economists at National Bank of Canada, said in a note.

“As the Bank of Canada’s latest communications have focused on inflation resilience rather than signs of weak growth, there is a risk that it will inflict too much damage on the economy by maintaining an overly restrictive monetary policy,” they said.

They argue there is already plenty of evidence pointing to the economy’s decline, including slowing gross domestic product per capita, which has fallen for six straight quarters. The jobs market is also on the fritz with the private sector having generated almost no new positions since June 2023, they added.

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Article content“Moreover, business survey data do not point to any improvement in this area over the next few months, with a significant proportion of companies reporting falling sales and a return to normal in the proportion of companies experiencing labour shortages,” the economists said.

Despite all these signs of weakness, inflation is stalling, they said, adding it is being overly influenced by historic population growth and the impact of housing and mortgage-interest costs.

The trio expect very tepid growth for 2024 of 0.3 per cent.

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Rising gas prices: RBC Economics

Higher energy prices likely boosted the main year-over-year inflation figure to 3.1 per cent in February, Royal Bank of Canada economists Carrie Freestone and Claire Fan said in a note.

Gasoline prices rose almost four per cent in February from the month before. But the pair believe a weakened Canadian economy and slumping consumer spending mean “price pressures in Canada are more likely to keep easing and narrowing (to fewer items in the CPI basket of goods).

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Economy

China Growth Beats Estimates, Adding Signs Economy Gained Traction With Stimulus

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China’s strong factory output and investment growth at the start of the year raised doubts over how soon policymakers will step up support still needed to boost demand and reach an ambitious growth target.

Industrial output rose 7% in January-February from the same period a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said Monday, the fastest in two years and significantly exceeding estimates. Growth in fixed-asset investment accelerated to 4.2%, strongest since April. Retail sales increased 5.5%, roughly in line with projections.

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China’s retail and industrial data lifts economy, but real estate drags

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Image for article titled China’s new retail and industrial data beat expectations — but signs still point to trouble ahead

 

 

Photo: Florence Lo (Reuters)

 

 

Official economic data out of China for the January and February period came in better than expected. Industrial output rose 7%, higher than the 5% forecast by economists in a Reuters poll, and sped up from the 6.8% growth in December, according to data published Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics.

Meanwhile, retail sales grew 5.5%, better than the 5.2% predicted by analysts but slowed from the previous period’s 7.4%.

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Still, the country’s troubled real estate sector continues to weigh on the economy: Investment in property development fell 9%. Commercial real estate sales are also down double-digit percentages.

“The national economy maintained the momentum of recovery and growth and got off to a stable start,” the statistics office said in its release. Beijing typically releases combined data for January and February to smooth over distortions caused by the Lunar New Year holidays.

China’s shaky domestic demand

Clouding the strong numbers from Monday’s data release are the persistent signs of weak domestic demand in China. New bank lending in China fell more than expected in February, according to Reuters calculations based on People’s Bank of China data.

Total outstanding yuan loans grew by 9.7% last month, a record low in data going back to 2003, according to Bloomberg. The sluggish borrowing demand comes even as the Chinese central bank made a surprise cut in the amount of cash that banks must hold in reserve, suggesting the stimulus measure has had little impact. And Beijing’s exhortations for unleashing “new quality productivity” (also translated as “new quality productive forces”) remains more rhetorical than substantive, particularly absent deeper structural reforms to the country’s economy.

With shaky demand at home, China’s bid to hit a GDP growth target of 5% this year will likely mean leaning heavily on its export machine. But that gambit will also face hurdles as governments, including the EU and Brazil, launch probes into China’s allegedly unfair trade practices. Separately, the U.S. is considering whether to investigate Chinese shipbuilding following a petition from major American labor unions.

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