Chinese pick pets over kids as shifting demographic trends reshape economy
- Marriages are also increasingly shunned by the younger generation, sending weddings plummeting in 2024 to what may be a nearly half-century low for China
Pets are likely to outnumber infants and toddlers in China starting this year, as people have grown increasingly unwilling to have children amid a decline in women of childbearing age, according to a recent Goldman Sachs report.
The findings coincide with anticipations that marriages in the country could plunge to a nearly 45-year low in 2024, underscoring a raft of demographic challenges facing the world’s second-largest economy.
Goldman Sachs analysts, led by Valerie Zhou, also estimated the number of pets would be close to double the number of children below the age of four by the end of the decade, highlighting the shifting population trends and their implications.
“We expect to see stronger momentum in pet ownership amid a relatively weaker birth-rate outlook and higher incremental household pet penetration from the younger generation,” said the report published late last month.
Separately, 3.43 million couples registered for marriage in the first six months of 2024 – a decline of nearly half a million compared with the same period last year, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs. The number of marriages is widely expected to dip further this year to the lowest point since the late 1970s.
According to the China Pet Industry Operation Status and Consumer Market Monitoring Report released by market consultancy iiMedia Research from 2023 to 2024, the scale of China’s pet economy is expected to reach 811.4 billion yuan (US$113.6 billion) by 2025, up from 592.8 billion yuan in 2023 and 295.3 billion yuan in 2020.