China is currently classified as Stage 4 of the Demographic Transition Model, characterized by low birth rates and low death rates. However, with a fertility rate of just 1.0 births per woman in 2023 and three consecutive years of population decline, China is showing clear signs of moving into Stage 5, where deaths outpace births and the total population shrinks.
What Stage 4 Looks Like in China
Stage 4 of the DTM describes a country where both birth rates and death rates have fallen to low levels, producing a relatively stable population. For most of the 2010s, China fit this description neatly. Birth rates were low but still high enough to keep the population growing, and death rates remained low thanks to improved healthcare and nutrition. The population hovered around 1.4 billion.
What makes China’s position unusual is the speed at which it passed through the earlier stages. Western European countries took well over a century to move from high birth and death rates (Stage 1) through industrialization-driven declines (Stages 2 and 3) to the low, balanced rates of Stage 4. China compressed that same journey into roughly 50 years, driven partly by economic development and partly by the one-child policy enforced from 1980 to 2015. Japan followed a similarly accelerated path, but China’s pace of aging in the coming decades is projected to be even faster.
Why China Looks Like Stage 5
Stage 5 is not universally included in the DTM, but demographers use it to describe countries where the fertility rate drops so far below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman that the population begins to shrink. China’s fertility rate was 2.51 in 1990. By 2024, it had fallen to 1.01. That is one of the lowest rates in the world, comparable to South Korea and well below Japan.
China’s population peaked at 1.4 billion in 2022 and has declined every year since. The country recorded its third consecutive year of overall population decline in 2024. United Nations projections estimate the population will fall to around 1.3 billion by 2050 and could drop below 800 million by 2100. Some UN models project an even steeper decline, to roughly 633 million by the end of the century. These numbers place China firmly on a Stage 5 trajectory, even if the official classification still reads Stage 4.
An Aging Population With Few Young Workers
Nearly 15% of China’s population is now 65 or older, a threshold that formally qualifies it as an “aging society.” That share is rising fast. Decades of low birth rates mean fewer young people are entering the workforce, while life expectancy improvements mean more people are living into old age. The result is a growing imbalance: a shrinking base of working-age adults supporting a rapidly expanding elderly population.
This pattern, often described as “growing old before growing rich,” is a central concern for Chinese policymakers. Most countries that reached similar levels of aging, like Japan and Germany, did so at much higher per-capita income levels. China faces the economic burden of an elderly population without the same financial cushion.
Urbanization and Its Demographic Effects
China’s urbanization rate reached 67% in 2024, climbing more than one percentage point per year over the past 45 years. Urban living strongly correlates with lower fertility. Housing costs are higher, childcare is harder to arrange, and career expectations shift. The massive wave of rural-to-urban migration that fueled China’s economic boom also accelerated its fertility decline.
That migration is now slowing. The “floating population” of migrant workers who moved to cities without formal urban residency has begun to shrink. More than 100 million of these workers have transitioned into official urban residency, and some have returned to rural areas following economic slowdowns. With the total population already declining, the traditional model of city expansion driven by incoming rural workers is becoming unsustainable.
Government Efforts to Raise Birth Rates
China has reversed its family planning restrictions dramatically. The one-child policy ended in 2015, replaced by a two-child policy. In 2021, the government introduced a three-child policy. None of these changes have meaningfully increased births. The three-child policy in particular has had limited impact because relatively few couples had already chosen to have a second child, making a third even less likely.
The government has recognized that removing restrictions alone is not enough. Proposed support measures include financial subsidies for families with two or more children, tax relief, reduced housing and utility costs, and expanded maternity insurance coverage. There are also plans to build more nurseries, kindergartens, and children’s hospitals, extend compulsory education, and offer special subsidies for higher education in larger families. Proposals to extend maternity and paternity leave and establish community childcare counseling centers aim to reduce the practical and psychological burden on parents.
Despite all of this, 2024 saw only a small, temporary bump in births, the first increase in eight years. Researchers broadly agree that the policy changes are unlikely to produce a sustained reversal. The economic pressures of raising children in modern China, especially in cities, remain the dominant factor suppressing fertility.
Stage 4 on Paper, Stage 5 in Practice
The most accurate answer is that China sits at the boundary between Stage 4 and Stage 5. Most demographic databases still classify it as Stage 4, reflecting its recent history of low but roughly balanced birth and death rates. But with a fertility rate half the replacement level, a population that has been shrinking since 2022, and an age structure tilting rapidly toward the elderly, China’s demographic reality increasingly matches Stage 5 countries like Japan and Germany. The classification will likely catch up to the data within the next few years as the decline becomes more pronounced.