Great piece in the Wall Street Journal today, on China's aging population, a trend exacerbated by the one-child policy. That means there will be a declining number of wage earners to support an increasing number of older people. See: Gray Matters in Booming China
“But China's demographic dividend is about to start fading, and that has implications for the country's economy. Along with moderating total-factor productivity, it is the main reason the World Bank expects China's annual growth rate to drop to 7.7% in 2015, and 6.7% by 2020. It was 8.7% in 2009. This could mean China soon loses its place as Asia's fastest-expanding large economy. Indeed, Morgan Stanley economists expect India's annual growth rate to surpass China's somewhere between 2013 and 2015. One reason: India's age-dependency ratio is heading in the opposite direction from China's, a trend that could last until 2040 at least.”
Not stats we hear the China Perma-bulls touch on much.
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