American politicians constantly warn us that our Social Security system is underfunded and will squeeze itself out of money as our population grays. The benefits are meager, and the notion of support for the elderly from the extended family is no longer an American tradition. But the system staggers along. The Peoples Republic of China, where only one-third of its workforce is covered by pension benefits, has heavily relied on extended families to fill in the gaps in elderly care. Yet changing times and demographic shifts have created new problems for this rapidly-growing nation.
Since China has long maintained the “one child per couple” rule (formalized in1979 during the post-Mao era, with exceptions for rural communities and certain ethnic groups), there are insufficient younger people to either contribute to the pension plans for a rapidly aging population or to sustain the traditional notion of care for the elderly by the extended family. The July 6th Los Angeles Times: “By the middle of this century, fully a third of China's population will be age 60 or older, compared with 26% in the United States. China's projected 438 million senior citizens will outnumber the entire U.S. population.”
The PRC has added 32 years to the life expectancy (now 73) of its average citizen since the country was founded in 1949. While the per capital gross domestic product is still fairly low ($5,000 – one ninth of that of the U.S.), the cost of caring for the elderly is accelerating. It’s odd how a policy aimed at keeping the most populous nation on earth from exploding at the seams has such side effects. And since families prefer male children, the population has also skewed in that direction, constricting marital choices (or even the possibility of marriage) for men at the bottom of the Chinese socio-economic ladder; there are reportedly 32 million more Chinese males under the age of 20 than females.
Alternatives to extended family care for the elderly, once thought to be culturally unacceptable, are now are becoming necessities, particularly as parents and grandparents often remain behind in farms and villages as younger workers migrate to urban areas to expand their employment opportunities. The Times: “To ward off social catastrophe, China's central government has pledged to introduce a national pension system. The challenge will be crafting a plan that's generous enough to keep seniors from poverty but doesn't unduly burden the young. Today in China there are 5.4 working-age adults for every elderly person, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. That ratio will plummet to 2.5 by 2030 and to 1.6 by 2050…”
“‘The momentum makes the problem difficult to see,’ said Baochang Gu, a demographer at Renmin University of China. ‘It creates an illusion that we won't need to do anything. But it may be too late.’ … China's shrinking working-age population is projected to shave 0.7 percentage points annually off China's GDP starting in 2030. But the sick and aged will require an increasing share of resources.” The answer doesn’t seem to be to repeal the “one child” rule, since Chinese have grown comfortable with the reduced financial stress of supporting larger families, but with the fertility rate hitting 1.8 per couple, clearly China is not currently sustaining even a replacement rate, a factor that will only increase the longer-term reality of a rapidly graying population.
The face of China has changed dramatically over the last decade, particularly in the eyes of the industrialized and computerized West. We watch her struggle with modern challenges to her Maoist roots, hitting technological walls that challenge governmental traditionalists – from social security issues to Internet communications – yet what has occurred within her borders is staggering as anyone who has traveled through China over the past two or three decades can attest.
I’m Peter Dekom, and I thought you might like to know.
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