China’s Elderly Population Continues to Soar as 1950s Baby Boomers Age

Lin Xiaozhao

(Yicai Global) Aug. 20 — China’s quickly rising elderly population had risen to 240 million as of the end of last year as a result of the nation’s high birth rate in the 50s and 60s, according to official data.

People aged 60 or over made up 17.3 percent of the population at the end of December, data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs shows. That compare to 11.6 percent a decade earlier, since when the country has acquired 87.5 million more elderly citizens, more than the population of Germany.

“China’s population grew rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s, but the growth rate has been falling sharply since the one-child policy was implemented in the 1980s,” Lin Jiang, a professor at Sun Yat-sen University, told Yicai Global.

“The pace of aging was predicted to slow down after the policy was relaxed, but the desire for a child is low in first- and second-tier cities as child-raising costs are high,” he added. Lin believes that the rapid aging will continue for another decade or so as those born in the 1960s reach retirement age — 60 for men, 50 for women and 55 for female civil servants.

The aging population opens the doors for medical and care services, which will likely rise quickly too and become a “gold mine”, Lin predicted, describing the availability of such services as crucial.

The elderly population is also seemingly following the growing Chinese travel trend. One 60-year-old from rural Anxi, Fujian province, worked as a farmer in his village and rarely got around to other cities. But now he and his fellow oldies are frequently on the move.

“Almost everybody has a passport and a travel pass to Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan — and wants to visit other places,” said the man, surnamed Lin. “I can’t lag behind.”

Editor: James Boynton