Shanghai is the largest city in the world in terms of population. The population of Shanghai is now estimated at 23.9 million in 2013, up from its 2012 population of 23,710,000. It has a population density of 3,700 people per square kilometre, or 9,700 people per square mile. The line graph below shows that despite the consecutive years of deaths outnumbering births, total population has grown by 20.7% from 13.37 million persons in 2001 to 16.14 million persons in 2005. (Cox, 2011)
Figure 1 Indicates the population growth in Shanghai between the years 1950 to 2005. The yellow trend line indicates the dominant population and the pink trend line indicates the population where migrants are taken into account. Source: (Shanghai Flash, 2003)
As an overall trend, it is clear that Shanghai's population has undergone a dramatic growth until year 2000 and followed by a gradual negative growth during the last few years due low fertility rates. In year 1950, the dominant population in shanghai stood at 4.9273 million persons. That number rose rapidly to 10.7 million persons by 1960 and followed by a gentle increase. By 2000, the permanent population in Shanghai had reached 16.40 million persons. 13.21 million are inhabitants with a Shanghaies citizenship, 3.87 million are inhabitants with a permanent residence status, living here for more than six months. The real numbers of the floating population not included in the permanent resident number are not really known. The floating population is only registered with the local security offices when the members stay in the city for longer than a month in the city. They are regarded as residents when they stay longer than six months. Due to the promising development and lessening restrictions of policy concerning resident status, Shanghai has attracted more migrants year by year. According to the graph above, there were 1.06 million migrants in Shanghai in 1988 while the amount of migrants had soared to the actual number of nearly 4 million people for the year 2000. Shanghai has thus become one of three main migration centres, together with Beijing and Guangzhou.
The city today has a rare situation that cannot be seen in any other countries. Their population is raised by the pace of 3 million every year causing an aging society and a divide between the rich and the poor, yet building construction is growing at a rapid rate. Shanghai has been one of the fastest developing cities in the world for the last twenty years, with double-digit growth nearly every year since 1992, except during the global recession of 2008-2009. The permanent resident population in Shanghai increased to 23 million by the end of 2010, (Liu, 2012) and experts predicted the rising trend will not slow down as the number could reach 30 million by 2020.
According to figures released by the Shanghai Population and Family Planning Commission