Beijing - A growing number of countries are facing the twin challenges of declining and aging populations, as younger generations choose to have fewer children and as advances in health care extend life expectancy.

China said on Friday that its population will decline for the third consecutive year in 2024, by nearly 1.4 million people to 1.408 billion. Elsewhere in Asia, Japan's population has declined for 15 consecutive years, while South Korea reported negative growth in 2021. In Italy, the number of births fell below 400,000 for the first time since the 19th century.

The United Nations says populations have peaked in 63 countries and territories, about half of them in Europe. The United Nations predicts that another 48 countries will reach their peak within the next 30 years.

Globally, the population of 8.2 billion is still growing, and the United Nations predicts that this number will reach 10.3 billion in about 60 years and then begin to decline.

For many countries with declining populations, the slow but hard-to-reverse trend has prompted governments to offer financial incentives to try to encourage people to have children to help support growing numbers of older people.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hayashi Yoshimasa last year called the demographic situation grim and said the next six years would be "our last chance to reverse this trend."

Japan's population peaked at 128 million in 2008 and has since fallen to 125 million. The number of births in 2023 hit a record low of 730,000.

Young Japanese are increasingly reluctant to get married or have children, surveys show, citing bleak job prospects, rising costs of living faster than wages and a corporate culture that is unfavorable to women and working mothers.

Japan's population is expected to shrink to 87 million by 2070, with 4 out of 10 people aged 65 or older.

Part of the population is still growing: foreign residents grew by 11%, taking their population to over 3 million for the first time in 2023, accounting for nearly 3% of the total population.

China is aging, a trend that could weaken economic growth and challenge the government's ability to serve a larger older population with a smaller workforce.

Some people saw an opportunity. A "university for the elderly" in the Chinese capital Beijing has enrolled 150 students in dance, singing, yoga and modeling courses. The company's business has yet to break even, but founder Liu Xiuqin is confident about the future of the market because retirees born in the 1960s value quality of life and health more than previous generations.

The government will raise the retirement age from 60 to 63 for men over the next 15 years; from 50 to 55 for women in factories and other blue-collar jobs; and from 55 to 58 for women in white-collar jobs.

After its population began to decline in 2022, China ceded its status as the most populous country to India in 2023. Although China has relaxed its one-child policy to allow up to three children, the number of babies women are giving birth to is still declining.

The population of 1.4 billion - still more than 10 times Japan's population - is expected to decline to 1.3 billion by 2050.

Successive Italian governments, backed by the Vatican, have vowed to address the social, economic and cultural causes behind one of the world's lowest birth rates.

Pope Francis has repeatedly urged Italians to have more children to reverse what he says is a demographic winter facing many industrialized countries.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's government has launched a campaign to encourage at least 500,000 births a year by 2033, a pace that demographers say is essential to increasing the working population and preventing the economy from collapsing as retirees collect their pensions is necessary.

The number of births has dropped steadily from about 577,000 in 2008 to 380,000 in 2023. This is the first time since the unification of Italy that the number of births has fallen below 400,000.

Research suggests this is due to a combination of factors, including a lack of affordable child care, low wages and a tradition of women caring for elderly parents.

South Korea's population will rebound in 2023 due to the influx of foreigners.

In a country where birth rates are falling again, many young people don't feel the same obligation to have children that their parents and grandparents did.

Some are put off by the high cost of raising children in a competitive education system and a patriarchal culture that forces women to shoulder most childcare responsibilities.

The number of foreign residents rose 10% to 1.9 million, partly due to the extension of the work visa program, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said, citing the government's statistics agency.

This was enough to increase the total population slightly - by 0.2%, to 51.8 million people.

Of these, 9.5 million are aged 65 or older. Demographic trends have raised concerns about labor shortages and tight government budgets.

___

Associated Press writer Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed.