Entering ChinaThe professor of Renmin University refuted the rumor that “the mortality rate of the post-80s generation exceeds that of the post-70s” and shared the research on marriage and childbearing patterns
“The level of post-90s women not marrying may climb significantly”
“By the end of 2024, the mortality rate of the post-80s generation will exceed 5.2%, which is equivalent to 1 in 20 post-80s generations.” “The mortality rate of the post-80s generation has exceeded that of the post-70s.” Recently, related topics have been fermenting on the Internet, and Li Ting, a professor at the School of Population and Health of Chinese University, wrote two articles in a row to refute rumors and popularize science, which caused widespread reprinting.
As a professional scholar who mainly studies marriage and family transformation, population and digital society, Li Ting shared research on China’s single youth and changes in marriage patterns in an interview with Nandu and N video reporters on February 22. She mentioned that the development of AI technology will interact with China’s demographic transition, resulting in more complex and long-term effects.
Debunking rumors
The online rumor that “the post-80s mortality rate exceeded 5.2%” is a wrong inference
Recently, there have been rumors on the Internet about the topic of “the post-80s mortality rate exceeded 5.2%”.
Some self-media mentioned that the source of the data is China’s census communiqué. Theoretically, using the total population aged 0-9 in the fourth national census in 1990 and subtracting the total population aged 30-39 in the seventh national census in 2020, we can indeed get a “death number”, so as to calculate the “death ratio” of the post-80s specific population as of 2020.
“But the result is not a ‘mortality rate’ in the demographic sense.” Li Ting explained that the mortality rate is a period indicator, and its formula is that the number of deaths in a certain period divided by the average population in that period measures the intensity of deaths at the current point in time – the higher the mortality rate, the less conducive the current environment is for survival. For example, in 2024, China’s crude mortality rate will be 7.76 per thousand, far lower than the figure of 5.2%.
The so-called “1 out of every 20 post-80s on average” in self-media articles describes the cumulative death probability of the post-80s and is a cohort indicator. It should be noted that according to the death data of the 1982 census (which is generally considered to be relatively accurate), the probability of death of the national population aged 0 was 3.5% that year. In other words, even if the 5.2% mentioned above is accurate, about two-thirds of them die at birth.
Li Ting said that in general, the health level of Chinese residents is relatively good in the world, ahead of China’s economic development level. Through public data, it can also be calculated that the survival situation of the post-80s generation is better than that of the post-70s.
Misunderstandings
The “main force” of not having children actually comes from the floating population
In fact, it’s not just a generational “death rate” that touches people’s hearts, demographics such as marriage rate, fertility rate, average age at first marriage, etc., which have now become a hot topic on social media.
The truth behind this is that China is undergoing a demographic transition, and many changes are related to the vital interests of members of society, and the “feeling” is even more obvious. As a result, some people throw their inner doubts to the AI tools on the market, but at this stage, AI may output wrong reasoning and conclusions due to training corpus problems, misquotes, etc., and even “justified nonsense” to generate misleading rumors.
“If you talk about the low fertility rate in China since the 90s of the last century, many people may have a misunderstanding, that is, they think that the ‘main force’ who does not have children now is the educated group with urban hukou. In fact, most of the decline in fertility has come from the once high-fertility group – the floating population. Li Ting said that this phenomenon may be due to the fact that these rural migrant workers feel that the cost of living and childbirth in the city is very high, and the work pressure is very high, and they cannot fully enjoy the city’s public service system. At the same time, they have left the society of acquaintances in their hometowns, and have been detached from the traditional concepts of universal marriage and cultural norms, and multiple factors have led to their emergence as the group with the greatest change in fertility rate.
According to the data of the seventh national population census, in 2020, the age of first marriage for both men and women in China reached 29.38 and 27.95 years respectively, a record high. The number of unmarried people between the ages of 20 and 49 has reached 134 million, and the number of one-person households in the same age group has also expanded rapidly, reaching 58.97 million.
Li Ting believes that China is still a certain distance from the “single society” in the strict sense (the social situation in which singleness becomes a choice that individuals cannot ignore). East Asian countries such as China, Japan, and South Korea have extremely low rates of out-of-wedlock births. In China, we found that many women have children within 10 months of marriage, and the proportion of “marriage with children” is quite high.
Research
The pattern of marriage and childbearing after the 00s may undergo historic changes
Based on the similarities between China, Japan and South Korea, how may the marriage and childbearing patterns of the younger generation in China evolve next?
Li Ting said that from the data of the seventh national census in 2020, it can be seen that China is still in a state of universal marriage and universal childbearing, and the lifetime unmarried rate of women (the proportion of people who have not experienced their first marriage at the age of 50) is less than 2%. But the people that can be portrayed by this data are the youngest post-70s, and the younger generations cannot be judged, and even everyone who has not yet entered marriage may not be able to predict.
Interestingly, when Li’s team compares the cumulative proportion of women of different ages in these three countries who are married in different years, we can see that the age distribution pattern in China in 2020 is very similar to that in South Korea in 2000 and Japan in 1990.
In 2020, 17% of women in Japan have not experienced their first marriage by the age of 50, and the proportion in South Korea is 8%, which is rising rapidly. In 1990 and 2000, respectively, the non-marrying levels in Japan and South Korea began to rise significantly, and the pattern of marriage postponement in these two years is just similar to that of 2020 in China. This may indicate that after 2020, the level of non-marriage among Chinese women may also follow in the footsteps of Japan and South Korea, and begin to climb significantly.
She said that this change will first happen to the post-85s, followed by the post-90s. As for the post-00s, judging from some microscopic or individual perspectives of questionnaires, qualitative interviews and other studies, we have reason to believe that their marriage and fertility patterns may undergo greater and historical changes. But what kind of change is probably not answered by the existing data.
Speculation
The development of AI is likely to drive demographic upheaval
Last year, Li Ting wrote a paper on the relationship between the development of artificial intelligence and demographic transformation, and one of the ideas was that the development of artificial intelligence could lead to lower fertility levels.
“At a time when China is undergoing a demographic transition and the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, I suspect that these two forces will have a profound impact on the social and economic landscape of our country, and the two will interact with each other to form more complex and long-term effects.” She said that the development of AI can have an indirect impact on demographics in multiple dimensions.
First, it has a substitution effect on fertility, which may reduce the individual’s willingness to marry and have children. Second, the widespread use of AI will impact the labor market, at least in the short term, increasing uncertainty about the job market and income prospects, causing many people to worry about being “replaced by machines”, which will also objectively reduce fertility levels.
In addition, she also added that many people may be full of worries about China’s current declining birthrate and aging population, especially since the country’s total population has experienced negative growth in 2022, and everyone feels that this is a serious “problem” or “dilemma”.
In her view, the relationship between population size and economic development cannot be generalized, and whether it is better to have a larger population or a smaller population is also constantly changing in history, and is highly correlated with the level of social productivity at that time.
“In an agrarian society, why do people think it’s good to have children? Because at that time, production and labor were carried out in the family unit, and adding a person would give one more laborer, which could help the family survive better. But in industrial society, where the family is no longer the unit of production, and the population grows to a certain extent, we will feel that the distribution of resources is a problem. Later, we found that basically all developed countries in the world will experience a significant decline in fertility levels. She further said that now that the era of AI has arrived, and the traditional labor force has begun to be replaced by robots, at this time, real people may have to compete for intelligence, and human society may be as Yuval Noah Harari said in “A Brief History of the Future”, there will be a terrible division……
The comprehensive adaptation of technology, population and system is the key to sustainable social and economic development. Perhaps from this point of view, demographic change is neither a good thing nor a bad thing, but a big thing. The same thing may be a bad thing on a ten-year scale, but on a hundred-year scale or more, its significance to human society may change.
Co-ordinator: Nandu reporter Xiang Xueni Ma Hui
