An article off the New York Times entitled, "China Scrambles For Security As Its Workers Ages" discusses about the looming problem of an increase number of retirees living off of the contributions of the youths. Apparently, the retirement ages are around 50 for women and 55 for men. Problem? Yeeeees! The UN predicts that by 2050, China will have about 430 million retirees. OMG!!! That's more than the entire population of the U.S. =:O
For some time now, the government has been trying to find solutions for China's pension system problem. One solution was to bring in more migrant workers so that some of their income would go to paying for old folks' pensions. However, people argued that with more migrant workers, that will only serve as a temporary fix that will lead to huge ramifications because in the future, there would be even more retirees.
One professor from a population research institute in Shanghai suggest that the government should gradually increase the retirement age so that way, older people would stay employed for a longer period of time, instead of massively relying on China's young to support them. Increase retirees is not the only problem. The fact that people are having less children is also an important factor. With only 1 offspring instead of several to help support elders, many old people are concerned that their child may not have sufficient means to look out for them. Some analysts are also worried that if China's industries takes a dive, then there would be some serious complications with the added bonus of huge numbers of people not working but living off the fat of the land.
[Wow, and I thought George Bush had it bad] :~
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