BEIJING, Jan. 18 -- Young Chinese are increasingly hesitant to start families, citing economic concerns exacerbated by rigid social norms around child-rearing, even as their government grows desperate to boost the birth rate and stave off a demographic crisis.

China's population decline accelerated in 2023, official figures released yesterday showed, shrinking by more than two million people.

Long alarmed by falling fertility, the government has relaxed its decades-long one-child policy in recent years to allow three children per family, while rolling out subsidies and calling on women to become homemakers.

But the incentives and exhortations are doing little to change what demographers describe as an economic crisis in the making, as ...