China to raise retirement age to deal with aging population – media

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China plans to raise the retirement age gradually and in stages to cope with the country's rapidly aging population, The state-backed Global Times reported on Tuesday, citing a senior expert at China's Ministry of Labor and Welfare, Reuters reported.

Jin Weigang, president of the Chinese Academy of Labor and Social Sciences, said that China is considering a “progressive, flexible and differentiated way to raise the retirement age.”

retirement for just a few months”, — reported the Global Times, citing Jin Weigang.

According to the Global Times, young people may have to work for several years longer, but they will have a long period of adaptation and transition.

“The most important feature of the — allow people to choose when to retire based on their circumstances and conditions.”

China has yet to officially announce a change to its retirement age, which is one of the lowest in the world: 60 for men, 55 years for employees and 50 years for women working in factories.

Li Qiang, the country's new premier, said on Monday that the government will conduct rigorous research and analysis in order to make policy sound in discourse.

As China's 1.4 billion population dwindles and ages , due in part to policies that limited married couples to one child from 1980 to 2015, the pressure on pension budgets is mounting, forcing politicians to address this situation urgently.

China's National Health Commission expects people aged 60 and over to grow from 280 million to more than 400 million by 2035, equal to the entire current population of the UK and the United States combined.

Life expectancy increased from about 44 years in 1960 to 78 years in 2021, higher than in the United States and projected to exceed 80 by 2050.

five workers. This ratio is half what it was ten years ago and could reach a ratio of 4:1 in 2030 and 2:1 in 2050.

Demographers and economists say that the current pension a system that relies on a dwindling active workforce to pay pensions to a growing number of retirees is unsustainable and needs to be reformed.

According to the Ministry of Finance, 11 of China's 31 provinces are running a pension budget deficit.State Academy of Sciences China predicts that the pension system will simply run out of money by 2035.

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