The sustainability of China’s Urban Employees’ Pension Programme: A case of getting old before getting rich?

Abstract

This article examines the sustainability of China’s Urban Employees’ Pension Programme – the main component in China’s overall old‐age support system. It looks at the sustainability of the programme generally and, in particular, at case studies of two areas (Tianjin municipality and Guangxi province) to highlight both the extent of regional variations and the common challenges facing Chinese policy‐makers. It discusses a number of key issues that should assist policy‐makers to address the challenge of population ageing. It concludes that the challenge facing China is no more severe than that already faced by other countries in Europe and Asia. Moreover, the ageing of the population is not uniform across the regions of China. Consequently, those areas where the demographic shift is more advanced will provide some opportunity for policy experimentation. Given the experience to date of slow progress on various aspects of pension policy reform, the article suggests that it seems unlikely that paradigmatic change will be significant. Nonetheless, the study suggests a range of parametric policy measures that China should consider. The challenge facing China’s policy‐makers is to ensure that China gets old and rich at the same time.

Spatial-temporal evolution of population aging in the yangtze river delta urban agglomeration of China

“…As pointed out in the Research Report on the Forecast of Population Aging Development Trend in China [ 6 ], from 2001 to 2100, the development trend of population aging in China can be divided into the rapid aging stage from 2001 to 2020, the accelerated aging stage from 2021 to 2050, and the stable severe aging stage from 2051 to 2100. China presents the typical characteristics of “getting old before getting rich” [ 7 ] and “getting old before being prepared” [ 8 ]. However, the rapid increase in the degree of population aging in China is accompanied by unbalanced regional distribution and noticeable intra-regional differences [ 9 ], and there is a higher concentration of the aging population in the eastern part of China [ 10 ].…”

Spatial–Temporal Patterns of Population Aging in Rural China

“…Over the past 40 years, the studies on China’s population aging have always been a focus for the scientific community and governmental organizations. Traditionally, studies on population aging in China mostly focus on analyzing the current situation and development trends of China’s population aging and point out that China’s population aging presents significant characteristics such as a large-scale elderly population, fast growth rate, uneven distribution of aging, and “getting old before getting rich” [ 4 ]. Due to the vigorous development of geographic information technology in the 1990s, the spatial analysis method is widely applied to the study of the aging population, such as Global Moran’s I and kernel density analysis, and considerable literature has grown up around the theme of the spatial and temporal characteristics of the aging population distribution in recent decades [ 5 , 6 ].…”

People’s Republic of China: Selected Issues

“…Many enterprises fail to fully pay social insurance premiums for employees. Also, employers and employees may mutually agree to make social insurance contributions on the basis of wages that are lower than those actually being paid (Cousins 2021;Zhou 2021). In many areas the real contribution rate (contributions as a percentage of earnings) has been much lower than the statutory rate (Zhao and Mi, 2019).…”