According to the United Nations Population Fund, China’s 2024 Total Fertility Rate (TFR: the expected number of children per woman) was 1.2. Among sovereign states, only Singapore and South Korea are ranked below China (at 1.1 and 0.9 respectively). Some sources, however, contend that China’s fertility rate is considerably lower. Database Earth, for example, gives a current figure of 1.02. Conversely, other sites report higher figures. Macrotrends claims that China’s TFR is currently over 1.7 – and that is has been slowly increasing for a quarter century (see the graph posted below). Macrotrends’ analysis is ostensibly based on UN data, specifically from its “World Population Prospects 2024” website. But the graph of China’s TFR on this UN website does not square with that of Macrotrends. It does show China’s TFR slowly increasing from the late 1990s to the late 2010s, eventually reaching around 1.7, but it then depicts a sharp drop-off that has continued to the present. The same UN graph, however, then projects China’s TFR as slowly increasing over the rest of this century at various estimated rates, although likely remaining below replacement level. Evidently, there is a lot of unacknowledged uncertainty about global fertility rates, especially when it comes to future projections. Overall, previous UN projections have severely underestimated the pace of global fertility decline.
One of the more prominent sources arguing for fertility rates below those reported by the UN is the data-rich X account called Birth Gauge. In October 2024, Elon Musk referenced Birth Gauge in warning that low birth rates “will lead to mass extinction of entire nations.” The author of Birth Gauge uses information on birth numbers reported by individual countries to calculate up-to-date TFR figures. I cannot assess the accuracy of these assertions, but I must say that the author’s estimate of the Philippines’ TFR falling to 1.3 in 2024 seems unlikely (see the table below); the UN, after all, still pegs the Philippines’ TFR at 2.7.
Birth Gauge TFR figures are usually but not always below those of the UN. Most of its higher numbers pertain to Central Asia. For example, it posts a 2024 figure of 3.57 for Kyrgyzstan, as opposed to the UN’s 2.9. Also of note is Birth Gauge’s admission, given in an April 7, 2023 X post, that actual TFR figure may end up being higher than what it and other sources report: “When women shift their births to higher ages, the conventional TFR underestimates how many children they will really have in the end, which is the ‘tempo effect.’”
Birth Gauge pegs China’s 2024 TFR at 1.10, a slight uptick from its 2023 figure of 1.02. It provides a useful data table of China’s estimated TFR figures for 2023 by region, which I have converted into a map (see below). As can be seen, all China’s province-level administrative districts are evidently below the replacement level. Only Tibet, with a reported figure of 1.97, comes close. As a comparison with the second map posted below shows, which depicts per capita GDP by region, fertility patterns in China have little connection with economic productivity. Extremely low birth rates are found in some of China’s wealthiest provinces (Jiangsu) and in some of its poorest (Heilongjiang). Regions with relatively high fertility, however, do tend to be less economically productive than average. Intriguingly, the coast/interior dichotomy, prominent on the GDP map, does not appear on the TFR map. The latter map, however, does show a muted differentiation between the lower-fertility north and the higher-fertility south. Particularly notable are the extraordinarily low birth rates in China’s northeastern “rust belt” (Manchuria). This was the most economically productive part of China in the mid-twentieth century, noted for its heavy industry. It did not, however, share proportionally in the economic boom of the 1990s and early 2000s, and is now known for its depressed conditions.
