Houston Community News >> China Faces Hard Task of Providing Care for the Elderly
12/12/2006 China-- China said
yesterday that creating welfare programs for its soaring numbers of elderly is a
national priority, but warned that will be a daunting challenge in a rapidly
graying society.
China faces an acute demographic crunch due to birth-control programs that limit
most urban couples to one child, which will cause the ratio of working people to
retirees to drop sharply.
The government has launched pension, health care and other programs for the
elderly, the Cabinet said in a report on aging. It didn't mention any new
initiatives.
"China regards the establishment of an old-age security system corresponding to
the level of the country's socio-economic development and aging population as an
important task and a priority area," it said.
But it cautioned that with the population of elderly people rising 3 percent a
year, paying for such programs will strain finances.
"However, as a developing country with a population of 1.3 billion, China still
has problems and shortcomings in the work concerning elderly people," the report
said.
The number of elderly Chinese people is expected to top 200 million by 2015 and
280 million by 2025, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
"Given the absence of adequate social security provision, the economic and
social consequences of aging will present a massive challenge to the Chinese
government,'' said Bob Ash, a professor at the School of Oriental and African
Studies in London who studies the issue.
"The financial burden on the state to meet the needs of the aging population
will be enormous all the more so, given that China is unlikely to attain the
status of a rich country in the foreseeable future," he said.
The government "has begun to study the establishment of an old-age social
security system in rural areas in order to guarantee the basic livelihood of the
elderly people there," the report said.
(Contributed by AP)