Strategies for addressing demographic challenges

As China hopes to resume a high rate of economic growth, the role of demography has become increasingly uncertain and complex.

The good news is that China's population is heavily concentrated at the most highly productive working ages. A just-completed study commissioned by the United Nations shows China is very near its historic high achieved in 2013.

The bad news is that China's demographic advantage will disappear rapidly as its population ages and shifts out of the working ages. Over the next 10 years, the shift out of the working ages, other things remaining equal, will depress annual growth in per capita income by 0.9 percent both on the Chinese mainland and in Hong Kong.