Why Do China and Hong Kong Have an Ageing Population?

“Rising life expectancies and improved health means the population is ageing more slowly and the burden may not be as dramatic as feared, scientists say.” The problem of ageing population is getting worst in Europe and Asia, and China is one of them. China is the largest and most populous country in the world. The world’s population has approximately 6.7 billion people and China has over 1.3 billion which is almost one fifth of the world’s total. Hong Kong has a small number of population compare to the total number of China, and which is about 7.3 million. But if we compare it to the size of Hong Kong, it’s quite a populous place. And this large number of population is caused by the hight birth rate and low death rate. China has a birth rate of 13.71 per 1000 population and death rate of 7.03 per 1000 population. And for Hong Kong, the birth rate is 11.7 per population and death rate is 6.76 per 1000 population. As we can see, the death rate of both China and Hong Kong is almost a half less than the birth rate and this is why they have an aging population.

The one child policy in China is the main reason why it has an ageing population and this is also why the problem in Hong Kong is not as serious as China. Some traditional people used to think that having a male baby is a fortune to them because he can inherit all their properties and since the status of female was lower than male before. People kept having children until they have a male baby and it caused overpopulation. This problem was significantly improved after the one child policy was 0implemented, but it seemed causing another problem in China. This policy caused the birth rate to drop rapidly and the number of elderly keep increasing. This will form a inverted pyramid which the bottom is the number of babies and the top is the number of elderly.

Nowadays, more women are concentrate on their career and because of the economics crisis, lots of people want to earn more money before they have their own family. It caused late marriage and which means people’s plan of having a baby will be postponed or even canceled. The birth rate will keep decreasing if this situation persists.