As of Nov. 2025, 15.87% of China’s roughly 1.4 billion residents were aged at least 65, compared with 15.25% aged 0 to 14, the bureau said on May 22. Five years ago, the country’s 2020 census found 13.50% aged 65 and above against 17.95% aged 0 to 14, a gap of more than four percentage points with children ahead, illustrating the speed at which the demographic curve has inverted.
The crossover puts China alongside Japan, South Korea and Western Europe in the small group of major economies where the elderly population now outnumbers the young, though China has reached this point at a far lower level of per-capita income than its East Asian neighbors.
The data was extrapolated from a survey held between the once-a-decade national censuses, covering more than 20 million people, the South China Morning Post reported.
The average Chinese household now contains 2.52 people, down from 3.10 a decade ago, the NBS said. Independent demographer He Yafu told the SCMP the contraction reflected “a significant rise in single- and dual-person households, signalling an intensification of non-marriage and childlessness trends.” He said the rising elderly population and the move toward smaller households were “placing immense pressure on the traditional family caregiving model.”
The working-age population is shrinking in parallel. Chinese residents aged 15 to 59 made up 61.89% of the population, down from 67.33% a decade ago.. Those aged 60 and above now account for 22.86%.
He Yafu said the group aged 65 and over, the main users of pensions and elderly care services, had now overtaken the child population, “adding further strain to social security pension payments.”
The release also showed that 357.88 million Chinese residents are classified as migrants, nearly 68% of the population lives in urban areas, and 272.33 million have a university-level education, China Daily reported.
Beijing’s response has shifted from demographic anxiety toward a reframing of the data. A readout issued after a State Council executive meeting chaired by Premier Li Qiang on May 15 said China would focus on raising the overall quality of its population to “continuously build up and unleash the human resources dividend,” while striving to “maintain a moderate fertility level and population size.”
Justin Yifu Lin, former chief economist at the World Bank and dean of the Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University, told a recent conference that the average years of schooling for China’s retiring workers is seven to eight years, while young labor market entrants average 14, state broadcaster CGTN reported.
Lin argued the higher education level of new workers more than offsets the loss from retirees, framing the shift as a transition from a quantity-based to a quality-based talent dividend.
The State Council is also leaning on the country’s “younger elderly,” those aged 60 to 64, as an economic asset rather than a fiscal burden. In an article posted on the NBS website in late 2025, an official said the cohort remained in good health and still wanted to be engaged in society, the SCMP reported.
The policy push has moved fastest on the cost-of-children side. Earlier this month, the National Health Commission urged city governments to reduce the financial burdens of childbirth, child-rearing and education on families, and called on employers to help workers balance work and family. The commission launched a campaign that will designate 40 cities and 200 workplaces as supportive of childbirth every three years, the latest in a sequence of measures.
Reuters estimated in January that Beijing’s total potential spending to encourage births in 2026 will reach around 180 billion yuan (US$25.8 billion). The figure includes the cost of a national child subsidy launched in 2025, which pays 3,600 yuan annually per child under three, and expected medical insurance reimbursements covering pregnancy and childbirth.
Independent demographer Yi Fuxian, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Reuters that for many people in China, “having just one child or no child has become the social norm,” citing the legacy of the one-child policy in place from 1980 to 2015.
China’s total births fell to 7.92 million in 2025, the lowest level on record, and the country’s population shrank by 3.39 million to 1.405 billion, the fourth consecutive year of decline, NBS data showed.
Economists at Rhodium Group projected in April that China will lose nearly 60 million people over the next decade, roughly the population of France, with the annual decline reaching 7.6 million by 2035.
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