China's population crept past 1.4 billion last year for the first time while its birth rate dropped to its lowest level since the Communist country was founded in 1949.

The National Bureau of Statistics said Friday the population on the Chinese mainland reached 1.40005 billion at the end of 2019, with another overall gain of 4.67 million people.

That marked the third consecutive year when overall number of births dropped.

China's birth rate stood at 10.48 per thousand last year, the lowest in 70 years and down from 10.94 per thousand in 2018. In the picture above, nurses massaging babies at an infant care centre in Yongquan, south-western China's Chongqing municipality, on December 15, 2016

The country is seeing a huge gender gap, a direct consequence of its now-abolished one-child policy which was enforced for 40 years or so.

The authority said there were 30 million more men than women in the nation last year, with its male population reaching 715. 27 million and its female population counting almost 684.8 million.

China's working age population, those between 16 and 59 years old, also declined by 890,000 from 2018 to 896.4 million, while the number of people aged 60 or older grew by 4.39 million, making up 18.1 per cent of the total population.

China's population crept past 1.4 billion last year for the first time. Pictured, hundreds of passengers wait for their trains at the Hangzhou East Railway Station in Hangzhou on January 17 in the annual Spring Festival travel rush, dubbed the world's largest annual human migration

China abandoned its long-standing one-child policy in 2016 in hopes of reversing what some have called a coming demographic tsunami in which China will grow old before reaching its development targets.

But the policy allowing urban couples to have a second child has shown little success amid a dearth of incentives and rising costs for housing, food, health care and education.

The country's birth rate stood at 10.48 per thousand last year, the lowest in 70 years and down from 10.94 per thousand in 2018. The number of babies born in 2019 dropped by about 580,000 to 14.65 million.

The authority said there were 30 million more men than women in the nation last year

Many young couples in China are reluctant to have children because they cannot afford to pay for health care and education alongside expensive housing.

The abolishment of the family-planning law has not provided much of a tangible boost to the country's birth rate.

Meanwhile, divorce rates are hitting records. In the first three quarters of 2019, about 3.1 million couples filed for divorce, compared with 7.1 million couples getting married, according to data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs.