Mapping evolving population geography in China

Abstract

China's demographic changes have important global economic and geopolitical implications. Yet, our understanding of such transitions at the micro-spatial scale remains limited due to spatial inconsistency of the census data caused by administrative boundary adjustments. To fill this gap, we manually collected and built a population census panel from 2010 to 2020 at both the county and prefectural-city levels. We show that the massive internal migration drives China's increasing population concentration and regional disparity, resulting in severe population aging in shrinking cities and increasing gender imbalance in growing cities.