by Fauna on Monday, July 2, 2012 ChinaSmack
Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security expert recommends pushing retirement age back to 65
A discussion forum on strategies for proactively responding to the aging population convened in the capital yesterday. Head of the Human Resources and Social Security Research Institute He Ping suggested that our country should progressively prolong the retirement age, proposing that by 2045 the retirement age be 65 years old for both men and women.
Severe labor force shortage
According to the second global population census data, our country is the only country in the world where the elderly population exceeds 100 million. In 2010, our country’s elderly age 60 and above already reached 178 million, 23.6% of the of the entire world’s elderly population. This signifies that 1/4 of the elderly population is concentrated in China.
Director of The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) World Social Security Research Center Zheng Bingwn indicated that the aging of the population means the ratio of the burden the elderly have on the the population is constantly increasing while the contributions of the labor force is decreasing.
Zheng Bingwen explained that our country’s working age population will decrease from 970 million in 2010 to 870 million in 2050. The inflection point will occur in 2015, when the 998 million peak will be reached and then begin decreasing year after year, averaging a decrease of 3.66 million per year.
Director of the Quantitative Economy and Technical Economy Research Analysis Office of the CASS Li Jun predicts that by 2050, our country’s 15-59 year old labor force population will decline to 710 million people, a decrease of about 230 million from 2010. From 2030 onwards, a serious shortage will manifest itself in our country’s labor force supply.
Recommend extending the retirement age to 65
Facing the undeniable fact of our country’s aging population, many experts on the discussion forum once again proposed gradually pushing the retirement age back to slow the speed of the decrease in the labor force.
Director of the Social Security Research Institute of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security He Ping mentioned that many foreign aging countries have adopted and are using external mechanisms to guide members of the labor force to voluntarily extend their retirement ages to combat their aging population. He recommended that our country begin implementing a policy of extending the retirement age beginning from 2016, with the retirement age being pushed back a year every two years. By 2045, the retirement age for both men and women would be 65 years old.
Li Jun also recommends a timely increase in the retirement age. He expressed that this aim is not to promote growth but to reduce the speed of the shrinking of the overall labor force size, to weaken the anticipated increase in costs to the labor force. But he pointed out that the age of retirement is extremely important, and must be treated cautiously in policy making.
Strengthen elderly training
Head of the Population and Labor Economy Research Institute of CASS Cai Fang suggested that along with the progressive decline of our country’s labor force population, our country should progressively delay the retirement age as well as strengthen training for the elderly to create opportunities for those affected by the extending of the retirement age.
Cai Fang spoke frankly that the older the person is in our country’s population, the lower their level of education is. Therefore, our country currently does not have the conditions for extending the retirement age.
He recommends that the retirement age could adopt a flexible system, to fully use a portion of high skilled and high quality labor capital. At the same time, for the ordinary laborers with inadequate education, we can adopt prioritizing education and strengthening training to increase their level of education, thus increasing their ability to serve in their positions.
This article received a lot of attention on popular Chinese portal NetEase, attracting over 22k comments and 500k participants spanning over 750 pages after it was published early this morning, making it far and away the most popular and most discussed topic on the site today…
Comments on NetEase:
richardma80 [网易辽宁省沈阳市网友]：
Looks like the world is going to change, ding not extending the retirement age!!!