Shanghai - Demographics

Demographics

The 2010 census put Shanghai's total population at 23,019,148, a growth of 37.53% from 16,737,734 in 2000. 20.6 million of the total population, or 89.3%, are urban, and 2.5 million (10.7％) are rural. Based on population of total administrative area, Shanghai is the second largest of the four direct-controlled municipalities of China, behind Chongqing, but is generally considered the largest city in China because Chongqing's urban population is much smaller.

About 9 million out of the 23 million residents of Shanghai, or more than 39%, are long-term migrants, triple the 3 million in 2000. The main origins of the migrants are Anhui (29.0%), Jiangsu (16.8%), Henan (8.7%), and Sichuan (7.0%) provinces, and 79% are from rural areas. They account for the entire population increase as Shanghai's natural growth rate has been negative since 1993 due to its extremely low fertility rate — just 0.6 in 2010, probably the lowest level anywhere in the world.

98.8% Of Shanghai's residents are of the Han Chinese ethnicity, while 1.2% belong to various minority groups. However, the minority population has grown by 165.54% since 2000, much faster than the overall population growth.

According to the Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau, there were 152,050 officially registered foreigners in Shanghai as of 2009, an increase of 50% from 100,011 in 2005. The three largest foreign nationalities were Japanese (31,490), American (21,284) and Korean (20,700). Note that these statistics only show officially registered residents, and that the actual number of foreign citizens living in Shanghai is likely much higher. For example by 2009, the South Korean community in Shanghai increased to more than 70,000 according to Xinhua. Some foreign expatriates are staying in Shanghai as long-term settlers, renewing Shanghai's reputation as China's global city. In addition, there are a large number of people from Taiwan living within the municipality (2010 estimates vary around 700,000).

The life expectancy of Shanghai's registered residents in 2010 reached 82.13 years (79.82 for men and 84.44 for women), the highest in mainland China and higher than all but a few countries in the world. In the same year, the maternal mortality rate in Shanghai was 9.61 per 100,000, while the infant mortality rate dropped to 5.97 per 1,000 from 6.58 in 2009. Due to the combination of high life expectancy and low fertility rate, there is a serious aging problem among Shanghai's registered residents: as of 2009 only 8.3% of the total were under the age of 14, while 22.54% were over 60.