SHANGHAI — For three decades, China’s one- child policy helped power this nation’s economic rise. With fewer mouths to feed, families saved. Poverty fell. Living standards improved.
But the social experiment is now threatening the country’s hard-won gains. China’s working- age population — the engine behind its prolific growth — will start shrinking in a few years.
Meanwhile, the ranks of elderly are projected to soar. By the middle of this century, fully a third of China’s population will be age 60 or older, compared with 26 percent in the U.S.
With fewer workers to support an aging society, China faces the same demographic squeeze confronting Western nations, but with a twist.
“The age wave is coming while China is still relatively poor,” said Richard Jackson of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. “China may be the first major country to grow old before it grows rich.”
