Average size of households in China 1990-2023

This graph shows the average size of households in China from 1990 to 2023. That year, statistically about 2.8 people were living in an average Chinese household. 

Average household size in China

A household is commonly defined as one person living alone or a group of people living together and sharing certain living accommodations. The average number of people living in one household in China dropped from 3.96 in 1990 to 2.87 in 2011. Since 2010, the figure was relatively stable and ranged between 2.87 and 3.17 people per household. The average Chinese household still counts as rather large in comparison to other industrial countries. In 2023, an average American household consisted of only 2.51 people. Comparable figures have already been reached in the bigger cities and coastal areas of China, but in the rural provinces the household size is still much larger. According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the household size in China was diametrically correlated to its income.

Birth rates and household sizes

The receding size of Chinese households may be linked to the controversial one-child policy introduced in 1979. The main aim of the policy was to control population growth. While the fertility rate in China had been very high until the 1970s, it fell considerably in the following decades and resided at only 1.7 children per woman in 2018, nearly the same as in the United States or in the United Kingdom. A partial ease in the one-child policy was introduced in 2013, due to which couples where at least one parent was an only child were allowed to have a second child. In October 2015, the law was changed into a two-child policy becoming effective in January 2016.