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What is the size of the market for disposable diapers in China?

Here's a good example of a market sizing. How many people live in China? A billion. (For a guesstimate, that's close enough to the actual figure of 1.3 billion.) Because the population of China is young, a full 600 million of those inhabitants might be of child-bearing age. Half are women, so there are about 300 million Chinese women of childbearing age. Now, the average family size in China is restricted, so it might be 1.5 children, on average, per family. Let's say two-thirds of Chinese women have children. That means that there are about 300 million children in China. How many of those kids are under the age of two? About a tenth, or 30 million. So there are at least 30 million possible consumers of disposable diapers.

To summarize:

  • 1 billion people x 60 percent childbearing age = 600,000,000 people
  • 600,000,000 people x 1/2 are women = 300,000,000 women of childbearing age
  • 300,000,000 women x 2/3 have children = 200,000,000 women with children
  • 200,000,000 women x 1.5 children each = 300,000,000 children
  • 300,000,000 children x 1/10 under age two = 30 million

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