Monday, February 19, 2018
Tackling China’s demographic challenges
Currently, China not only faces demographic challenges of low fertility, but an overpopulation of elders as well. People aged 65 and over are predicted to increase in population from 131 million to 371 million, and those aged 80 and over will increase from 22 million to 121 million by the year 2050. Thus, putting a lot of constraint on China's socioeconomic progress and growth. As a solution to this problem, the Chinese government has proposed increasing the retirement age and also considered "a family-based old-age care system" supplemented and supported by old-age care facilities provided by the community and the government themselves. Only time will tell whether or not these new proposals will prove to be successful, but China is undoubtedly urbanizing at a pace faster than the older generations can afford keep up with. Literally because I think it's a lot of money to take care of old people.
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3 comments:
While it is a positive health sign individuals are living longer, the ratio of people entering and leaving China's labor market is way off, putting the cost of the elderly on their children and families. I forecast that their one child policy will bring the opposite issue in the upcoming decades and the elderly will become a very small portion of the population. China needs to determine how to balance out these severe population fluctuations hurting their economy.
It would be interesting to know the effect of the one-child policy has had any effect on this. Children are obligated to look after their parents in most Asian countries but because of a decrease in younger population, there are fewer people to look after the old age people, resulting in a greater pressure on the economy.
It really becomes a big issue in China. One child policy allows people to only have one child, which means today’s Chinese couple have to take care of their parents(4) and children. This is really stressful and many people don’t want to marry and have child because they couldn’t afford it, which make the situation even worse. Eventually, the Chinese economy would be hurt because of lacking of productivities.
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