The total fertility rate of Hong Kong has been decreasing
steadily in the past quarter century to 984 live births every
thousand women from 1933 babies in 1981, the Census and Statistics
Department said in a report Thursday.
The declining fertility, coupled with declining mortality, drove
Hong Kong, the special administrative region in south China and
currently a city of 6.86 million people, towards "a continuing
dejuvenation and aging trend", the report said.
Life expectancy for man increased from 72.3 years in 1981 to
79.4 years in 2006, while the median age of the population rose
from 26.3 to 39.6 during the period.
Meanwhile, the total population of the city rose from 5.18
million to 6.86 million, representing an average annual growth rate
of 1.1 percent.
Delay in marriage prevailed, with the median age at first
marriage for brides rising from 24 to 28 in the quarter century
while the figure for bridegrooms from 27 to 31.
A total of 17,424 divorce decrees were granted in 2006, as
compared with 2,060 in 1981.
The aging trend of the population has posed a challenge, causing
labor shortage and prompting local authorities to provide
incentives for women giving birth to children and announcing a set
of policies aimed at attracting qualified immigrants.
However, with the economy at its best in a decade, Hong Kong has
seen a mini baby boom in 2007, the year of the piglet in the lunar
calendar which was deemed the lucky time for bearing new babies,
with 28,000 women in labor during the first 11 months, up 8.2
percent from the same period a year earlier.
(Xinhua News Agency December 27, 2007)