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.

For the full story, please visit https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-population-slowing-economy-7ff938e5?page=1.