Nearly half of Shanghai's permanent residents, who are expected to number 18.45 million by the end of the year, are considered "migratory" and local families are becoming smaller and having fewer children, officials from Shanghai Family Planning Association said yesterday.

More than a quarter of local residents are those from out of town living in the city for more than six months. And 20 percent of people with local residency don't live in the address they registered with the authorities.

There was a floating population of 6.27 million in the city last year and 4.67 million of them stayed for more than six months. They accounted for 25.7 percent of local permanent residents.

In addition to the increasing floating population and more people becoming elderly, the size of the local family was becoming smaller.

This is a new feature of local population development, officials said.

Sun Changmin, vice director of the family planning association, said Shanghai had been one of the first cities in the country to adopt family planning and the make-up of its population was changing more quickly than in other places.

It is the first city suffering an aging tendency, having negative natural population growth and the highest amount of inter-province floating population in China, he said.

Officials said the structure of the local population was not balanced.

The number of people between zero and 14 was smaller than people at other ages.

People who are single children account for 22.3 percent of local registered residents, 15.45 percent more than the national average. About 6.1 million people had a single child - 44.59 percent of local registered residents, 30.9 percent more than the national level.

About 3.05 million families have one child in the city - 61.06 percent of local families, 39.09 percent higher percentage than the national average.

(Shanghai Daily December 19, 2007)