* Liberalizing birth restrictions can't have any effect on the number of workers until ~20 years later, and in practice much later than that.
* Once the population pyramid has begun to invert, you have fewer people of childbearing age. Reversing the policy cannot replace the children who were not born a few years ago to families who are now beyond the point of seriously considering more children.
* In practice, once having fewer children is socially normalized, it's difficult to have a larger family going forward, and...
* Once you have a severely inverted population pyramid, the cost of supporting elders increases and the economic situation of those of working age deteriorates, which tends to further suppress births.
The ticking time bomb refers to the aftermath of the one-child policy. Demographically, there won't be enough adult children to support the parents of the one-child generation as they age.
Yeah, China's currently sitting at 1.3 children born per woman -- just like Italy or Spain, which are often cited as the EU "crisis" numbers.
This number is even worse than it appears though, since there are so many more men than women to begin with, thanks to the history of sex-selective abortion in the country. 12 million Chinese women were never born because their parents wanted a son instead of a daughter, and that's an extra 1.3 x 12 = 16 million children that will be missing from the next generation.
China's population is actually predicted to start shrinking in about 5 years.
> China's population is actually predicted to start shrinking in about 5 years.
A little overall population contraction isn't necessarily dire. The concerning thing is a decreasing fraction of the population being working age.
Ultimately, the most dire predictions have China's population halving over the next lifetime, and a sustained, big drop in youth. That's a pretty damning trend.
* Liberalizing birth restrictions can't have any effect on the number of workers until ~20 years later, and in practice much later than that.
* Once the population pyramid has begun to invert, you have fewer people of childbearing age. Reversing the policy cannot replace the children who were not born a few years ago to families who are now beyond the point of seriously considering more children.
* In practice, once having fewer children is socially normalized, it's difficult to have a larger family going forward, and...
* Once you have a severely inverted population pyramid, the cost of supporting elders increases and the economic situation of those of working age deteriorates, which tends to further suppress births.
It takes a long time for these trends to reverse.