The impact of population shrinkage has been more rapid than expected. As the front line of the population shock wave, kindergartens in China have begun to change. On March 1, the Ministry of Education held a press conference mentioning that the number of kindergartens in the country in 2023 is 27440,000. Compared to last year, this is a significant decrease of 1480,000. As early as 2022, the number of kindergartens in China has decreased for the first time in history, with 5,610 fewer than the previous year, a decrease of nearly 2%. However, the contraction in 2023 has accelerated significantly, and the decline has already exceeded 5%.
Come on! Mom" stillsThe reason why China's kindergartens are closed on a large scale is, of course, that there are fewer and fewer children in kindergartens. In 2021, the number of children in kindergartens in China showed negative growth for the first time, with a decrease of 130,000 that year, a decrease of 1.78 million in 2022, and a decrease of 5.35 million in 2023. The number of young children has decreased, and a large number of kindergartens have lost the need to exist and can only choose to close.
China's kindergarten enrollment age is 3 years old, last year's enrollment of young children was about 2020 was born, when China's birth population was 12 million, and in 2023, China's birth population is only 9.02 million, if you look at the population birth trend in recent years, in the next few years, China's kindergarten closure tide will continue. Although the current impact of population shrinkage is mainly manifested in kindergarten, it will soon spread to primary and secondary schools and even universities. In the face of the precipice of students, all levels of education should be prepared early. However, at the same time as the source of kindergarten students is off a cliff, China's higher education is still showing a trend of expansion.
Goodbye Our Kindergarten" stills In 2023, there will be a total of 3,074 colleges and universities in China, an increase of 61 over the previous year, an increase of 2%; A total of 10.42 million students were enrolled in general and vocational colleges nationwide, an increase of 2 over the previous year73%；A total of 1.3 million graduate students were enrolled nationwide, an increase of 4 over the previous year76%。Both the number of colleges and universities and the number of students have maintained a growth trend.
If kindergarten is regarded as the starting point of education in our country, higher education is regarded as the endNow China's education chain has shown a state, the starting point has begun to shrink rapidly, and the end point is still expanding. If higher education does not contract in a timely manner, the wave of university closures could be even more tragic when the shockwaves of population shrinkage reach the end. At that time, Japan, and now South Korea, have experienced and are experiencing a wave of university closures.
Stills from "Thirty Only".Since 2022, China's total population has experienced negative growth for two consecutive years, and the scale of the reduction has expanded rapidly. In 2023, the total fertility rate in our country has dropped to 10 or so. A woman of childbearing age gave birth to 21 child (total fertility rate 2.).1) It is a normal generational replacement level, which can maintain the total population of the next generation without declining. Our current total fertility rate is less than half of the normal level, and even more than Japan (1.).29) is still low, which means that the trend of China's population shrinking has been difficult to reverse.
As China accelerates into the era of population shrinkage, all aspects of the national economy will be affected, especially industries that are highly related to the population, such as education, infant industry, etc., and the biggest impact is the real estate industry that is closely related to everyone. The real estate industry is highly dependent on the demographic dividend, and whether the population grows or shrinks determines the real estate cycle to a large extent. A rapid shrinking population means a collapse in demand, especially in cities that have accumulated large bubbles in the early stage, and will accelerate the collapse due to population contraction.
It's all good" stillsThe bursting of Japan's bubble economy coincided with the cycle of population contraction. In 1989, Japan's economy reached an all-time high, and the property market soared. But it was also in this year that Japan's demographic crisis began, when Japan's total fertility rate fell to 157, a new all-time low, which Japanese society called "157 shocks". Since the beginning of this year, Japan's economy has turned from prosperity to decline, and the real estate bubble has burst, especially housing prices have fallen from a high point ** for more than 20 years.
Although China has not yet experienced the full-scale population shock of Japan, some cities have actually felt the impact of population shrinkage on real estate. In the past few years, represented by Hegang, housing prices in some third- and fourth-tier cities have fallen to one set.
30,000 or 40,000 yuan is also not cared for, the main reason is because of the continuous large outflow of population. In the past two years, the impact of population shrinkage on the property market has been transmitted to first-tier cities. Due to the increasing cost of living in first-tier cities, since 2022, China's four major first-tier cities have seen a net outflow of permanent residents for two consecutive years.
According to the latest data, in January this year, the second-hand housing in first-tier cities decreased by 4 year-on-year9%, and second-hand housing in second- and third-tier cities decreased by 4 year-on-year respectively4% and 45%。The decline in the first-tier property market is significantly greater than that in the second- and third-tier markets. Although there are many factors that affect first-tier housing prices, it is not just a coincidence that housing prices** and population outflows are synchronized. As the pressure of population shrinkage escalates from local to global in the future, more and more cities will feel the impact of shrinking population demand on housing prices.
Of course, a shrinking population doesn't necessarily mean all bad. In the past, China relied on a huge demographic dividend to support the rapid development of real estate, which made a huge contribution to China's economic growth, but it also developed a high dependence of China's economy on real estate. Moreover, the excessive development of real estate has also squeezed the development space of other industries to a large extent.
Stills from "Settle Home" Historically, of all the developed economies in the world, none of the countries have relied on real estate to achieve success. From this point of view,China's current shrinking population is, to a certain extent, equivalent to forcing reformOnly when real estate returns to an ordinary industry, rather than playing the role of the strongest locomotive of China's economy for a long time, can China's high-end manufacturing and other industries develop and grow, and China's economy can truly embark on a path of sustainable development.