Cats vs toddlers: Are Chinese youth choosing pets over kids?

China will have more pets than young children by 2030, according to a Goldman Sachs report. The investment bank predicts the Asian giant’s urban pet population will start exceeding the number of infants and toddlers this year.

This comes as young Chinese are unwilling to have children, the report says. “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,” Goldman Sachs said in its July 28 report.

Let’s take a closer look.

Pet vs children

According to Goldman Sachs, China’s urban pet population will be nearly double that of its young children by 2030.

The country will have 70 million (7 crore) urban pets by the end of the decade, while the number of children four and below will plunge to less than 40 million (4 crore), the bank reported citing data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics, as per CNBC.

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This is the opposite of 2017 when children aged four and under stood at 90 million (9 crore), compared to the urban pet population of about 40 million (4 crore).

According to the investment bank’s report, the increase in pet ownership would boost the pet food market to $12 billion by 2030. It predicts that cat ownership would be more than that of dogs as the feline needs less space to raise, reported CNBC.

China is witnessing a booming pet economy, including the sales of food, toys, healthcare and assorted services, as per South China Morning Post (SCMP).

The China Pet Industry Operation Status and Consumer Market Monitoring Report from 2023 to 2024 found that China’s pet economy could reach 811.4 billion yuan (US$113.6 billion) by 2025, a jump from 592.8 billion yuan last year and 295.3 billion yuan in 2020.

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While pet ownership in China is rising, it is still far behind developed countries such as Japan and the United States. Japan has a pet population of about 20 million (2 crore), which is almost four times the number of children aged four and under.

Speaking to Business Insider, Lin Zhang, a University of New Hampshire professor who studies entrepreneurship and the digital economy in China, said, “I am not very surprised to hear about Goldman Sachs’ forecast. We could observe similar trends in early developed countries in Europe and East Asia.”

She said pets play the role of companions for unmarried and childless youth, and senior citizens whose children live separately from them.

“In general, I think China’s going through a cultural transformation related to its rising living standards that people start to find cultural meaning in pets instead of treating them more as functional animals like in traditional agricultural society,” Zhang said.

China’s demographic crisis

China’s declining birth rates have become a cause of major concern. The country’s population stood at 1.409 billion by the end of last year, a 2.08 million decrease from 2022.

China saw just 9.02 million births in 2023, the lowest total on record.

Goldman Sachs forecasts that the Chinese population will shrink at an average rate of 4.2 per cent until 2030, driven by a drop in women aged 20 to 35 years. The unwillingness among the younger population to have kids will also impact the baby bust.

Experts blame the rise in plunging birth rates in China to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Asian giant’s economic issues and rising costs.

China, which was once the most populous nation, was overtaken by India in terms of population last year.

There are concerns that China’s younger generation could shun marriages that could dwindle to a nearly 45-year low in 2024, reported SCMP.

Although new marriages rose 12.4 per cent in 2023 from the previous year, more than half of people between the ages of 25 and 29 are still unmarried.

Marriage registrations peaked in the country in 2013 and had gradually dipped since then until last year’s increase, as per SCMP.

China is making efforts to arrest the decrease in birth rates by offering various incentives, such as giving cash gifts to newlywed couples and subsidising fertility treatments and childcare.

However, Chinese youth are not convinced to start families due to high financial costs.

Content creator Emily Huang, 29, told Business Insider in February that she is worried about how she would fund her retirement.

“I wouldn’t choose to spend a part of my income on children because it’s expensive,” Huang said. “I feel like with my current level of income, I can’t retire comfortably anytime soon.”

With inputs from agencies