The One-Child Policy Supercharged China’s Economic Miracle. Now It’s Paying the Price.

When China launched its one-child policy more than four decades ago, it sped up an evolution toward smaller family sizes that would have happened more gradually.

The policy supercharged the country’s workforce: By caring for fewer children, young people could be more productive and put aside more money. For years, just as China was opening its economy, the share of working-age Chinese grew faster than the parts of the population that didn’t work. That was a big factor in China’s economic miracle.

There was a price and China is now paying it. Limiting births then means fewer workers now, and fewer women to give birth. A United Nations forecast published Thursday shows how quickly China is aging, a demographic crunch that the U.N. predicts will cut China’s population by more than half by the end of the century.

In the late 1970s, China’s leaders feared a population explosion that would drain the country’s resources. When Deng Xiaoping rolled out the one-child policy nationwide in 1980, he said, “We must do this. Otherwise, our economy cannot be developed well.”

A young population has helped drive economic growth in developing countries across the world, including in China’s neighbor Japan starting in the 1950s. Economists call it a demographic dividend—the window, generally of a few decades, when a country has far more working-age people than young and elderly dependents. As such countries grow wealthier, people naturally choose to have fewer children and the population starts to age.

That was also the trajectory in China—just faster.

Knowingly or not, China essentially borrowed from its own future by accelerating its so-called demographic window. How the effects of the policy have sped up China’s demographic bind is scrambling the long-term models demographers usually work with.

“The challenge with China is that from one year to another the situation can change quite fast,” said Patrick Gerland , head of the U.N.’s population estimates and projection section. “Within the last decade, the changes have been very big, both in policy and in the numbers.”

For example, in its just-published global estimates, the U.N. expects China’s population to drop from 1.4 billion today to 639 million by 2100, a much steeper drop than the 766.7 million it predicted just two years ago.

Even so, the U.N.’s prediction looks optimistic compared with other estimates. Researchers from Victoria University in Australia and the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences have predicted that China will have just 525 million people by the end of the century.

It is impossible to say what China’s population trajectory would have been without the one-child policy. But a comparison with a broad group of other countries gives a clue.

Research by U.N. demographers illustrates how China’s demographic window opened faster and more sharply than in other “less developed” countries, and then closed equally quickly. The population of Chinese aged 20-64—the age when people are most likely to work—grew faster than children and the elderly in the years after the one-child policy was implemented. Before the policy ended, the trajectories had already reversed.

The broader group of other countries shows a smoother ride with the demographic window lasting well into the 2040s.

With China’s opening to the West, it became the world’s factory floor with millions of young people determined to work their way out of poverty. For most of the next decades, Chinese growth topped double-digit percentages.

The optimism was on full display during the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games. When the global financial crisis hit soon after, China kept growth humming and was credited with helping to save the global economy. A few years later, China overtook Japan as the world’s No. 2 economy .

But by 2013, China’s demographic dividend was largely over, according to research by Andrew Mason , an emeritus professor of economics at the University of Hawaii, and Wang Feng , a sociology professor at the University of California, Irvine.

Now, slowing economic growth and demographic changes feed off each other for a gloomy outlook.

“People always count on the [Chinese] government to do more to prop up the economy but the reality is that there’s not a lot the government can do,” Wang said.

Over the next decades, China’s population is likely to show a contrast from, say, India, where the age distribution is following a more natural progression, or the U.S., where immigrant inflows help counteract the aging of the population.

By the end of the century, the U.S. population will be about two-thirds of China’s, compared with less than a quarter now, according to the U.N.’s latest projections. And by then, India, which has overtaken China as the world’s most populous country , will have more than twice as many people as China.

The real demographic impact in China won’t fully hit until the middle of the century, when many of those born during the one-child policy will reach retirement—while still caring for aging parents, said Wang.

By 2050, the U.N. now projects 31% of Chinese will be 65 or older. By 2100, the share will be 46%, approaching half of the population. In the U.S., the share is expected to be 23% and 28%, respectively.

The U.N.’s revised forecasts see Chinese births dropping below nine million this year. In 2022, it had predicted that 10.6 million would be born in China in 2024. The U.N. now expects China will have only 3.1 million newborns a year by 2100.

Not only are there fewer women to give birth these days, but many young women, mindful of their mothers’ suffering during the one-child policy, are less interested in marriage and children , driving down the fertility rate.

As births slip, China’s elderly population is ballooning.

China expects a glut of more than 40 million new retirees—more than the population of Canada—over the five-year period ending in 2025.

The old-age support ratio, a rough indicator of the number of workers for each retiree used by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, is projected to decline from more than four now to fewer than two in 2050, according to The Wall Street Journal’s calculations of the U.N.’s latest data. It will likely reach one worker per retiree by the end of the century.

In reality, due to China’s low retirement age , with women clocking out as early as 50 and men at 60, the support ratio could be even lower.

Beijing as well as demographers and sociologists have said a highly educated population and the advancement of technology such as artificial intelligence, could help China weather such shocks, as more jobs will be automated.

The U.N.’s Gerland said that while the one-child policy was the main demographic event in recent decades, the waxing and waning in different Chinese age groups also reflect tumultuous periods in China’s past, such as the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward, which had substantial demographic impact on the size of the various cohorts born during these years.

“Because of China’s history, the population is going to carry over some of these memories of the past and it will take many generations for all of these past stories to be forgotten,” he said.

Give gold bugs their due. The yellow metal has been a light in the investing darkness. At a recent $3,406 per troy ounce, it’s up 30% this year, to the envy of stock, bond, and Bitcoin holders. Cash-flow purists will call this a flash in the pan, but they should look again. Over the past 20 years, SPDR Gold Shares , an exchange-traded fund, has surged 630%—85 points more than SPDR S&P 500 , which tracks shares of the biggest U.S. companies.

That isn’t supposed to happen. If businesses couldn’t be expected to outperform an unthinking metal over decades, shareholders would demand that they cease operations and hoard bullion instead. So, what’s going on? If this were gasoline or Nike shoes or Nvidia chips, we would look to supply versus demand. With immutable gold, nearly every ounce that has ever been found is still around somewhere, so price action is mostly about demand. That has been ravenous and broad since 2022.

That year, the U.S. and dozens of allies placed sweeping sanctions on Russia, including its largest banks, and China went on a bullion spree. Its buying has since cooled, but other central banks have stepped in. Perhaps this is unsurprising, in light of a decades-long diversification by finance ministers away from the U.S. dollar, which is down to 57% of foreign reserves from over 70% in 2000. But the recent uptick in gold stockpiling looks to JPMorgan Chase , the world’s largest bullion dealer, like a debasement trade. Investors are nervous about President Donald Trump’s tariffs, his browbeating of the Federal Reserve Chairman over interest rates, and blowout U.S. deficits.

Surging Demand

It isn’t just bankers. Demand among individuals for gold bars and coins has been surging, with some dealers experiencing sporadic shortages. Gold ETFs were bucking the trend, but flows there have turned solidly positive since last summer, including recently in China. All told, there is now an estimated $4 trillion worth of gold held by central banks, and $5 trillion by private investors. Calculated against $260 trillion for all financial assets, including stocks, bonds, cash, and alternatives, that works out to a global gold portfolio allocation of 3.5%, a record.

What’s next? BofA Securities says that central banks have room for much more gold buying, and that China’s insurance companies are likely to dabble, too. RBC Capital Markets analyst Chris Louney says ETFs could drive demand growth from here, especially if angst reigns. “Gold is that asset of last resort…the part of the investing universe that investors really look for when they have a lot of questions elsewhere,” he says.

Russ Koesterich, a portfolio manager for BlackRock , a major player in ETFs including the iShares Gold Trust , says that gold has proven itself as a store of value, and deserves a 2% to 4% weighting for most investors. “I think it’s a tough call to say, ‘Would you chase it here?’ ” he says. “There have been some pullbacks. Those might represent a good opportunity, particularly for people who don’t have any exposure.”

Daniel Major, who covers materials stocks for UBS , points out that gold miners mostly haven’t wrapped themselves in glory in recent years with their dealmaking and asset management. As a result, a major index for the group is trading 30% below pre-Covid levels relative to earnings. UBS increased its 2026 gold price target by 23%, to $3,500 per troy ounce, before gold’s latest lurch higher. Many miners are producing at a cost of $1,200 to $2,000. Major has bumped up earnings estimates across his coverage. “I think we’re gonna see further upward revisions to consensus earnings,” he says. “This is what’s attractive about the gold space right now.”

Major’s favorite gold stocks are Barrick Gold , Newmont , and Endeavour Mining . More on those in a moment. We also have thoughts on how not to buy gold—and what not to expect it to do: Don’t count on it to keep beating stocks long term, or to provide precise short-term protection from inflation spikes and stock swoons. But first, a little history, chemistry, and rules of the yellow brick road.

Flesh of the Gods

The first gold coins of reliable weight and purity featured a lion and bull stamped on the face, and were minted at the order of King Croesus of Lydia, in modern-day Turkey, around 550 B.C. But by then, gold had been used as a show of riches for thousands of years. Ancient Egyptians called gold the flesh of the gods, and laid the boy King Tutankhamen to rest in a gold coffin weighing 243 pounds. The Old Testament says that under King Solomon, gold in Jerusalem was as common as stone. Allow for literary license; silicon, an element in most stones, is 28.2% of the Earth’s crust, whereas gold is 0.0000004%.

Marco Polo described palace walls in China covered with gold. Mansa Musa I of Mali in West Africa, on a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324, is said to have splashed so much gold around Cairo on the way that he crashed the local price by 20%, and it took 12 years to recover. To Montezuma, the Aztec king whose gold lured Cortés from Spain, the metal was called, as it still is by some in Central Mexico, teocuitlatl —literally, god excrement. Golden eras, gold medals, the Golden Rule, and golden calf—so deep is the historical association between gold and wealth, excellence, and vice that it seems to have a mystical hold on humanity. In fact, it’s more a matter of chemical inevitability.

Trade and savings are easier with money. Pick one for the job from the 118 known elements. Years ago on National Public Radio, Columbia University chemist Sanat Kumar used a process of elimination. Best to avoid elements that are cumbersome gases or liquids at room temperature. Stay away from the highly reactive columns I and II on the periodic table—we can’t have lithium ducats bursting into flame. Money should be rare, unlike zinc, which pennies are made from, but not too rare, unlike iridium, used for aircraft spark plugs. It shouldn’t be poisonous like arsenic or radioactive like radium—that rules out more elements than you might think. Of the handful that are left, eliminate any that weren’t discovered until recent centuries, or whose melting points were too high for early furnaces.

That leaves silver and gold. Silver tarnishes, but rarer, noble gold holds its luster. It is malleable enough to pound into sheets so thin that light will shine through. And, despite the best efforts of Isaac Newton and other would-be alchemists, it cannot be artificially created—profitably, anyhow. Technically, there is something called nuclear transmutation. If you can free a proton from mercury’s nucleus or insert one into platinum’s, you’ll end up with a nucleus with 79 protons, and that’s gold. Scientists did just that more than 80 years ago using mercury and a particle accelerator. But what little gold they produced was radioactive. If you think you can do better, you’ll likely need a nuclear reactor to prove it, but a large gold mine is one-fifth the cost, and we have to believe the permitting is easier.

We passed over copper due to commonness, but it has become too valuable to use for pennies. The 95% copper content of a pre-1982 penny is worth about three cents today. The equivalent amount of silver goes for $3.10, and gold, more than $320. But the three trade in different units. A pound of copper is up 17% this year, at $4.72. Silver and gold are typically quoted per troy ounce, a measure of hazy origin and clear tediousness, which is 9.7% heavier than a regular ounce. A troy ounce of silver is $32.70, up 13% this year.

Some Finer Points

Confused? This won’t help: The purity of investment gold, called its fineness, is measured in either parts per thousand or on a 24-point karat scale. A karat is different from a carat, the gemstone weight, but our friends in the U.K.—who adopted troy ounces in the 15th century—often spell both words with a “c.” Gold bricks like the ones central banks swap are called Good Delivery bars, and weigh 400 troy ounces, give or take, worth more than $1.3 million. If you buy a few, lift with your legs; each weighs a little over 27 regular pounds (as opposed to troy pounds, which, it pains us to note, are 12 troy ounces, not 16).

There are many options for smaller players, like Canadian Maple Leaf coins, which are 24-karat gold; South African Krugerrands, at 22 karats, and alloyed with copper for durability; and Gold American Eagles, 22 karats, with some silver and copper. Proof coins cost extra for their high polish, artistry, and limited runs, and may or may not become collectibles. Humbler-looking bullion coins are bought for their metal value. Prefer the latter if you aren’t a coin hobbyist. Avoid infomercials and stick with high-volume dealers. Even so, markups of 2% to 4% are common. Costco Wholesale , which sells gold in single troy ounce Swiss bars, charges 2%, but often runs out, and limits purchases to two bars per member a day. Factor in the cost of storage and insurance, too.

ETFs are more economical. For example, iShares Gold Trust costs 0.25%, not counting commissions. For long-term holders, as opposed to traders, there is a smaller fund called iShares Gold Trust Micro , which costs 0.09%.

Resist fleeing stocks for gold. The surprisingly long outperformance of gold is mostly a function of its recent run-up. From 1975 through last year, gold turned $1 invested into about $16, versus $348 for U.S. stocks. That starting point has a legal basis. President Franklin Roosevelt largely outlawed private gold ownership in 1933; President Richard Nixon delinked the dollar from gold in 1971; and President Gerald Ford made private ownership legal again at the end of 1974.

Gold has been a so-so inflation hedge over the past half-century, and at times a disappointing one. In 2022, when U.S. inflation peaked at a 40-year high of over 9%, the gold price went nowhere. The problem is that high inflation can prompt a sharp increase in interest rates. “If people can clip a 5% coupon on a T-bill, often they’d prefer to do that than have either a lump of metal or an ETF that doesn’t produce cash flow,” says BlackRock’s Koesterich.

Likewise, while gold has generally offset stock declines this year, it hasn’t always done so in the heat of the moment. Recall tariff “liberation day” early this month, which sent U.S. stocks down close to 11% in three days and pulled gold down nearly 5%. “This isn’t an uncommon scenario,” says RBC’s Louney. “When investors were losing elsewhere in their portfolio, gold was sold as well to cover those losses.”

Our top tip on how gold behaves is this: It doesn’t. People do the behaving, and they are appallingly unreliable. Use bonds as a stock market hedge. If they don’t work, fall back to patience. For inflation protection, think of assets that are a better match than gold for the goods and services that you buy every week. A diversified commodities fund has precious metals but also industrial ones, along with energy and grains. Treasury inflation-protected securities are explicitly linked to the consumer price index, which measures inflation for a theoretical individual whose buying patterns differ from your own, but are close enough.

Own a house. Stick with a workaday, reliable car. Yes, cars deteriorate. But so does nearly everything on a long enough timeline. Rely mostly on stocks, which represent businesses, which wouldn’t endure if they couldn’t turn raw inputs like commodities into something more profitable. There’s even a miner, Newmont, in the S&P 500.

The Case for Mining Stocks

Speaking of which, UBS’ Major recently upgraded both Canada’s Barrick and Denver-based Newmont from Neutral to Buy. “Both very much fall into that category of having a challenging recent track record,” he says. Newmont has lost 20% over the past three years while gold has gained 76%, which Major blames on difficult acquisitions and earnings shortfalls. Barrick, down 8%, has been in a dispute with Mali since 2023, when its government instituted a new mining code that gives it a greater share of profits. In recent days, authorities have shut the company’s offices in the capital city of Bamako over alleged nonpayment of taxes.

These are the sort of headaches that Krugerrands in a safe don’t produce. But Major calls expectations “adequately reset,” free cash flow attractive, and guidance achievable. Newmont, at 13 times next year’s earnings consensus, is selling assets, and Barrick, at 10 times, has healthy production growth.

Major also likes London-based, Toronto-listed Endeavour Mining , up 40% over the past three years and trading at nine times earnings, although he says it has “higher jurisdictional risk.” It is focused on West Africa, especially Burkina Faso, which had a coup d’état in 2022. You’d think the stock would be doing worse amid such political upheaval. Then again, Burkina Faso since 1966 has had eight coups, five coup attempts, and one street ousting of a president who tried to change the constitution to remain in power. That works out to an uprising every four years, on average.

Montezuma’s scatological name for gold might have been prescient, considering the sometimes-odious consequences for small countries that find it.

The One-Child Policy Supercharged China’s Economic Miracle. Now It’s Paying the Price.

Revised U.N. data shows the speed of China’s aging after it accelerated its ‘demographic dividend’

Gold is outshining stocks, bonds and crypto. Here’s what’s driving the surge—and how to get in.

Surging Demand

Flesh of the Gods

Some Finer Points

The Case for Mining Stocks