China’s elderly cannot retire
Huh Dexy. Over sixty years of age. The power of walking has also decreased a lot. Still he has to walk for more than an hour every day. I had to wake up at 4 in the morning to go to a distant shopping mall. Cleaning work has to be done. Where he is supposed to rest at the age of 67, the struggle for livelihood still has to go on.
In China, many people like Hu cannot keep pace with urban life as expenses are higher than income. Having no means, he had to return to the village and run again to earn money. The country’s slowing economy has also weakened the pension system. The elderly people in China are living a miserable life in search of income, forced to save their lives. They are not able to retire from work even if they are old. Reuters.
Three decades ago, Hu and his wife sold homemade bread on the streets of Xi’an, China. Unable to adapt to the expensive life of the city, he moved to a village on the outskirts of Beijing. Both are working in a shopping mall some distance from there. They each earn 4,000 yuan ($552) a month working 13 hours a day as cleaners. Hu says, I don’t want to be a burden on my two children and our country doesn’t give us a penny. That’s why I’m still working.
Yang Chengrong, 60, and her husband Wu Yongho, 58, spend their days collecting cardboard and plastic for a recycling station in Beijing. They earn less than one yuan per kilogram. Yang says, I have heart problem. We both earn money but cannot afford the medical expenses.
Reuters interviewed more than a dozen people, including rural migrant workers in China, demographers, economists and a government adviser. Those who described a social security system as unfit for the growing demographic crisis.
Experts say the country is also struggling to raise enough funds to care for the growing number of elderly. Fuxian Ye, a senior scientist and demographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said China’s elderly are living long and miserable lives. More and more migrant workers are returning to rural areas. Some are taking low paying jobs. Although it is difficult to save themselves, they are looking for a way to earn.
The pension system in China is based on an internal passport system known as hukou, which divides the population along urban and rural lines. In Beijing and Shanghai, the monthly pension is up to 6,000 yuan, but in less-developed provinces it is much lower. About 3 thousand yuan. Since 2009 rural pension has been introduced nationwide but it is very small. That is why the elderly are leaning towards work. Meanwhile, the pension fund is about to run out. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) estimates that the pension system will run out of money by 2035.
China’s latest statistics show that in 2022, about 94 million working people (about 12.8 percent of China’s 734 million labor force) were over 60, up from 8.8 percent in 2020. This share is lower than that of rich countries like Japan and South Korea, but is set to skyrocket in the coming decades. An adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it would be easier to solve the problem if we could first solve the problem of increasing productivity.