The migrant population in China is expected to reach 310 million by 2030 but at a slower pace, which will finally lead to fewer laborers, experts said.
As of 2014, China had 254 million migrants, with 230 million rural residents expected to move to the cities by 2030, Wang Peian, deputy head of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said at a forum, The Beijing News reported.
Millions of migrant workers, mostly from the countryside, have abandoned their farmland and worked in China's booming urban areas, including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou since the early 1990s, leaving their parents and children behind.
Wang said he expects a sustainable growth of migrant laborers in the next few years.
But he stressed that the growth rate will taper off. There were 8 million more migrants between 2010 and 2015, with the number decreasing to 6 million in the next five years. Zhuang Ya'er, a research fellow at the China Population and Development Research Center, said that the lower fertility rate has contributed to this. With the family planning control policy, there will be fewer laborers, Zhuang said.
In 2014, China's average fertility rate stood at around 1.6 births per woman, according to the People's Daily, lower than the international standard of 2.1 to prevent the population from shrinking.
According to Wang, metropolises and coastal cities in Southeast China will remain attractive to migrants, while more of them will choose cities near their hometowns in the central and western regions due to the "One Belt, One Road" initiative that will drive the development of inland cities.
The latest census in 2010 showed that migrants accounted for 16.2 percent of the national population.
Although a migrant population fuels the country's economic growth, many left-behind children, women and elderly people live in rural areas, which leads to a breakdown in family ties, a lack of supervision over children and insufficient care for senior citizens, Wang said.
