Abstract
In response to a growing demand for subnational and spatially explicit data on China’s future population, this study estimates China’s provincial population from 2010 to 2100 by age (0–100+), sex (male and female) and educational levels (illiterate, primary school, junior-high school, senior-high school, college, bachelor’s, and master’s and above) under different shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). The provincial projection takes into account fertility promoting policies and population ceiling restrictions of megacities that have been implemented in China in recent years to reduce systematic biases in current studies. The predicted provincial population is allocated to spatially explicit population grids for each year at 30 arc-seconds resolution based on representative concentration pathway (RCP) urban grids and historical population grids. The provincial projection data were validated using population data in 2017 from China’s Provincial Statistical Yearbook, and the accuracy of the population grids in 2015 was evaluated. These data have numerous potential uses and can serve as inputs in climate policy research with requirements for precise administrative or spatial population data in China.
Highlights
Population has direct influences on the challenges related to the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change by influencing economic growth and social development, affecting the amounts of resource consumption and pollutant emissions, and determining the number of residents exposed to pollutants and natural disasters[1,2,3,4,5]
The Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) projection assumed that the life expectancy at birth (LE) of women would reach 93.2 (84.7, 101.7) in 2100 under the medium scenario for China, which is much higher than medium estimation made by the UN Population
The high fertility scenario assumes that the country will carry out more radical fertility policies, i.e., the fully open policy, resulting in the total fertility rate (TFR) reaching 2 by 2020, being 25% higher than the medium in 2050, and remaining constant afterwards
Summary
Population has direct influences on the challenges related to the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change by influencing economic growth and social development, affecting the amounts of resource consumption and pollutant emissions, and determining the number of residents exposed to pollutants and natural disasters[1,2,3,4,5]. A domestic Chinese institution has provided a provincial-scale estimate[13], to the best of our knowledge, there is no publicly available provincial or grid-scale estimation in China that considers the latest changes of the fertility rate and can reveal details in sex, age and educational attainment This limitation has caused constraints for some research[14]. We downscaled the projected provincial population and established spatially explicit population grids for China with a resolution of 1 km from 2010 to 2100 under SSPs to meet the requirements of integrated assessment models Both the provincial and gridded data will be useful for studies and simulations in future climate policy, public health, resource demand and allocations, environmental impacts and social equity
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