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.

In terms of just pet food, Goldman Sachs analysts expected that the industry would grow into a whopping US$12 billion market by 2030, with a compound average annual increase of 8 per cent. Cat food was seen outpacing the compound average at 10 per cent annual growth, while dog food sales looked to rise by about 5 per cent a year.

Despite pet food being among the fastest-growing consumer sectors in China, the pet-ownership penetration rate remains relatively low compared with developed countries such as Japan and the United States.

In Japan, the number of pets is around four times the number of children aged 4 and under.

Only 9.02 million births were reported in China in 2023, representing the lowest total on record, dating back to 1949.

According to estimates by Guangdong-based independent demographer He Yafu, marriages in the latter half of a year usually account for 46 to 49 per cent of the annual total. Therefore, the annual number of marriages this year is expected to reach 6.6 million, fewer than the 6.84 million weddings in 2022, which was the lowest annual total recorded since 6.37 million in 1979.

Since peaking at 13.46 million in 2013, marriage registrations had steadily dropped until last year’s uptick.

Last year also saw China’s total population drop for the second year in a row, falling to 1.4097 billion as it declined by 2.08 million.

Goldman Sachs projected in the report that new births in China are expected to contract at an average rate of 4.2 per cent until 2030, driven by a decline in women aged 20 to 35 years old, and by a waning willingness among the younger generation to have children.