Canada is by far not the only country to face a population decline. Only a few states (mainly in South America and particularly in Africa) will see population growth.

Among the larger economies, China is the country with the most severe decrease in population according to researchers, while the country is less prepared than many others. In most Western countries and other democratic states like Japan and South Korea, societies that underwent fertility decline benefited from a so-called 'demographic dividend' - driven by a long period of economic growth with a relatively large working population compared to smaller numbers of dependents younger than 15 and older than 65. China's dividend period started later (in the 1980s) than in other countries, and their fertility rate is now declining faster. This left China with a relatively low per capita income and, therefore, fewer resources to tackle the issues of an aging population.

Simply speaking, China got old before it got rich. This and the fact that China has a far less developed social welfare and pension system than we in the West will be an issue that is going to share the Chinese economy in the long run, but so far there are no clear signal how the country is addressing this.

So Canada and most (all?) democratic states are much better prepared for this demographic challenges ahead of us.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 days ago

Kind of weird to start braying about China in a thread about population decline in Canada. Last I checked this isn't a competition, and whether China has a declining or growing population has zero effect on what's happening in Canada. So, not sure why that was relevant in your mind, I guess China just lives rent free in your head?

That said, population decline narrative in China is largely based on misunderstanding of the data, and the situation in the US is actually worse, again though, not really seeing how any of this is releavant to Canada.