China closes tens of thousands of kindergartens amid record-low birth rate

By Minh Nga November 3, 2024 | 11:17 pm PT

A mother walks with her twin daughters on a street in Shanghai, China, June 7, 2021. Photo by Reuters

Thousands of kindergartens across China have been closing as decreasing birth rate led to drops in enrollment.

According to an annual report from the Ministry of Education released last week, the number of kindergartens in China declined by over 5% last year.

The total number of kindergartens in 2023 dropped by 14,808 to 274,400, marking the second consecutive year of decline.

Kindergarten enrollment also fell for the third consecutive year, by 11.55% (or 5.35 million) to 40.9 million children, The Paper reported.

The number of primary schools saw a similar downward trend, dropping by 5,645 to 143,500 in 2023, a 3.8% decline.

This decline is part of a broader demographic shift in China, where both birth rates and the overall population are shrinking, posing substantial risks to future economic growth, according to the South China Morning Post.

In 2023, China's population decreased for the second consecutive year, falling by over 2 million to 1.4 billion. The country reported only 9 million births last year, the lowest number since records began in 1949.

Demographers from the China Population and Development Research Center, a government research institute, reported that China's fertility rate fell to 1.09 in 2022, down from 1.15 in 2021. This rate was lower than Japan's during the same period and only slightly higher than South Korea's estimated rate of 0.8, the lowest rate in Asia and worldwide.

China has introduced various measures to address its declining population, but marriage registrations also fell in 2024. Official data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs showed that 4.747 million couples registered for marriage in the first three quarters of the year, a year-on-year decrease of 943,000, according to Reuters calculations.