The country is set to have more than 70 million urban pets compared with less than 40 million children under the age of 4, as young Chinese resist starting new families.

China’s pet population will be close to double that of its young children by 2030 as young Chinese remain unwilling to start new families, Goldman Sachs said in a recent note.

The country’s urban pet population is set to hit over 70 million by the end of the decade, while the number of children 4 and under will dwindle to less than 40 million, according to Goldman Sachs research that cited data from the National Bureau of Statistics.

In 2017, the situation was just the opposite — there were 90 million children ages 4 and under, compared with the urban pet population of around 40 million.

“We expect to see stronger momentum in pet ownership amid a relatively weaker birth rate outlook and higher incremental household pet penetration from the younger generation,” the investment bank’s equity analyst Valerie Zhou wrote.

New births in the country are projected to fall at an average rate of 4.2% until 2030, driven largely by a decline in the population of women ages 20 to 35, and as the younger generation is less inclined to have children, the report said.

Those between the ages of 23 and 33 made up almost half of the pet owners in China as of 2023, according to a China Pet Industry White Paper.

As young Chinese adults opt for fur babies over real babies, the bank expects the country’s pet food market to flourish to a $12 billion industry by 2030. The report also forecasts China’s cat ownership to surpass that of dogs, as the former tend to require less space to raise.

Birth rates are falling across the world as women choose to have fewer children, with some of the largest countries facing declining birth rates as the global population is on course to peak this century.