To get its citizens to have more children and stop its population from shrinking, China has tried it all, even declaring having babies an act of patriotism. And yet, for the third year in a row, its population got smaller.

Not even a surprise uptick in the number of babies born, a first in seven years, could reverse the course of an aging and declining population.

China is staring down a longer term baby bust that is rippling through the economy. Hospitals are shutting their obstetrics units, and companies that sold baby formula are idling factories. Thousands of kindergartens have closed and more than 170,000 preschool teachers lost their jobs in 2023.

The country’s birthrate, as one former kindergarten in the southern city of Chongqing put it, “is falling off a cliff.” Enrollments in China’s kindergartens plummeted by more than five million in 2023, according to the most recently available data.

On Friday, the National Bureau of Statistics reported that 9.54 million babies were born last year, up slightly from 9.02 million in 2023. Taken together with the number of people who died over 2024 — 10.93million — China’s population shrank for a third straight year.