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发帖数: 4825 | 1 http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/01/chinas-labo
CHINA'S working-age population fell last year as a proportion of the total,
according to figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics last week
. Chinese aged 15-64 represented 74.4% of the population in 2011, compared
with 74.5% the year before. The statistic prompted one or two stories
speculating about the end of cheap China.
But how useful is this ratio as a guide to wage pressures? Note, first of
all, that China's working-age population is NOT yet falling in absolute
terms. Judging by the NBS figures, it increased by about 3.45m in 2011. In
fact, China's working-age population numbered over 1 billion (74.4% of 1,347
,350,000) in 2011 for the first time.
China's dependency ratio (the number of Chinese not of working age as a
percentage of those who are) is still low, compared with its past or its
peers. It was lower in 2011 than in any recent year except 2010. It was also
lower than the ratio in all but five countries, according to UN figures.
This is largely because China's one-child policy restricts the number of
young dependants a family can add. (The ratio of elderly Chinese, relative
to those aged 15-64, has been rising steadily since the mid-1960s.) The one-
child policy has kept China's dependency ratio artificially low, but it has
also begun to slow the flow of new entrants into the workforce. The number
of 15-29 year olds--the nimble-fingered youngsters who man China's assembly
lines, stitching, twisting, fixing and stamping--peaked in 2011 at 326.6m,
according to UN estimates. That number will fall this year, the UN projects.
Another telling statistic was divulged by the NBS earlier in the week. It
noted that the number of migrant workers (living outside their home province
) increased by 3.4% last year. That's a slower rate of increase than the 5.5
% recorded in the previous year. As a consequence perhaps, the income of
migrant workers rose by 21.2%, the NBS reckons, to 2,049 yuan a month. If
true, that's an extraordinary surge. The average increase from 2005 to 2010
was only about 14.1%. Some migrants, at least, had good news to boast about
on their return home for the Spring Festival holiday. |
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