China's working-age population now supports more seniors than children

The crossover has happened. China's old-age dependency ratio overtook the child dependency ratio in 2025 for the first time, state-affiliated financial outlet Yicai reported on Oct. 25, citing the China Statistical Yearbook 2026 from the National Bureau of Statistics. The old-age ratio hit 23.1%, with the child ratio at 22%.

Translation: for every 100 people of working age, there are now about 23 seniors and 22 kids. The yearbook counts 223.65 million people aged 65 and up, or 15.9% of the population, against 212.76 million children aged 14 and under, or 15.1%. The old-age ratio has climbed from 15% in 2016 to 20.8% in 2021, reaching 22.8% in 2024 — just shy of that year's 23% child ratio.

The bigger picture isn't pretty. China, the world's second most populous country after India, shrank for a fourth straight year in 2025, falling by 3.39 million, now at 1.405 billion, per NBS data released in January. Births slipped to 7.92 million, and the birth rate hit a record low of 5.63 per 1,000 people — the long tail of the one-child policy that ran from 1980 to 2015, plus rapid urbanization.

According to the BBC, Stuart Gietel-Basten of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology called the shift "symbolic" and said it could point to public spending moving away from families and schools toward pensions and health care. He also warned the ratio risks stripping agency from older people, many of whom he said get miscast as dependents, and noted it ignores gains in health care.

Mu Zheng, a sociologist at the National University of Singapore, told the BBC the shift could weigh on China's economic growth and household spending power. She pointed to shifting gender roles, rising living costs and higher education levels as pressures on fertility. The landscape is already reshaping: kindergartens short on kids are being converted into elderly care facilities in cities like Changzhou, Jinan and Jinhua, Yicai reported, while idle rural primary schools are turning into nursing homes and senior canteens.

Beijing isn't sitting still. Families get an annual subsidy of 3,600 yuan ($540) per child under 3, plus childcare support and lower childbirth-related medical costs. In April, 15 government departments jointly issued a plan to make cities friendlier to young people, children and families, Reuters reported.