THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO SHOW UP: China’s population is about to shrink for the first time since the great famine struck 60 years ago.

Theories differ about why Chinese women remain reluctant to have children in the face of state incentives. One involves having become used to small families, another involves the rising cost of living, another involves increasing marriage age, which delay births and the dampens the desire to have children.

In addition, China has fewer women of child-bearing age than might be expected. Limited to having only one child since 1980, many couples opted for a boy, lifting the sex at birth ratio from 106 boys for every 100 girls (the ratio in most of the rest of the world) to 120, and in some provinces to 130.

China’s total population grew by a post-famine low of just 0.34 in 1,000 last year.

Projections prepared by a team at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences have it falling this year – for the first time post-famine – by 0.49 in a thousand.

The turning point has come a decade sooner than expected.

Plus: “China’s working-age population peaked in 2014 and is projected to shrink to less than one third of that peak by 2100.”