To respond actively to a rapidly aging population, a year-end meeting on China's economy demanded more support to boost fertility as well as postponement of the retirement age.

The annual Central Economic Work Conference was held in Beijing last week as Chinese leaders decided on the priorities for the economic work in 2023. Making economic stability a top priority, the meeting called for efforts to stabilize growth, employment and prices.  

China, home to 1.4 billion people, expects the domestic demand to play a major role in driving economic growth. But coming along with the potential of the domestic market is the pressure of the population's shifting structure.

By the end of 2021, the country had over 267 million people aged 60 and above, accounting for 18.9 percent of the country's population, data from the National Health Commission (NHC) shows. The proportion of people over 65 has grown from 9.1 percent in 2011 to 14.2 percent in 2021, which means the working-age population is shrinking quickly. Dependency ratios are rising as the population ages, straining the country's pension system.

More support for families

Last year, China's birth rate plunged to its lowest level since the early 1960s, with 13 provinces recording negative population growth for the first time in the country's modern history.

According to Xu Qi, an associate professor at the school of social and behavioral sciences at Nanjing University, people will be reluctant to have more babies as long as the heavy burden of raising children rests on families.

"In our culture, parents want their children to surpass them and usually provide the best resources they can offer for their children's education and growth," Xu said. "In this matter, quality is more important than quantity."

Besides financial burden, experts say major reasons for declining interest in having babies also include lack of affordable childcare and motherhood penalty in career development.

Over 20 provinces and cities in China have made legal changes to help build a family-friendly social environment, since the country introduced its three-child policy last August. Most of them extended maternal leave and added extra parental leave to the regulations on population and family planning.

In August, 17 agencies jointly announced a series of new measures to encourage families to have more children, providing support in the shape of childcare services, housing, tax cuts, more paid leaves and workplace equality.

More choices for the elderly

Raising the retirement age has been frequently mentioned in China's national plans and guidelines in recent years. Eastern provinces of Shandong and Jiangsu started to pilot the reform in January.

In China, the statutory retirement age for men is 60 and women can retire at 55 and 50, depending on their professions and positions. The policy, which was formed in the 1950s and adjusted in the 1970s, is bound to change as the average life expectancy of residents in the country has been continuously rising in the past decades: from 35 years in 1949 to 78.2 years in 2021.

Leaving the workforce at 65 is the norm in many aging countries. Joining the club of aging societies in 2000, China's early retirement age is considered to be a waste of human resources.

Jin Weigang, president of the Chinese Academy of Labor and Social Security Sciences, Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, told the China Media Group that the number of workforce in China has been declining since 2012, which may lead to insufficient labor supply in the future.

Instead of raising everyone's retirement age at once, the reform will be rolled out in a flexible and inclusive manner, which allows people to choose when to retire according to their conditions, said Jin.

Jin also said delayed retirement is conducive to increasing the participation rate of older workforce in the labor market, improving their income, pension and spending power.

Among the elderly population in China, over 55 percent were under 70, making up for the main force who could still work after retirement. The number will continue to surge as China's baby boomers, who were born in the 1960s and 1970s, approach retirement in the coming decade.

To make full use of these valuable human resources, a website for China's elderly talent was launched in August by the government, providing a platform of re-employment for the country's "elderly talent."

Professor Lu Jiehua from the Department of Sociology at Peking University said that labor laws and regulations need to include specific clauses related to the re-employment of the elderly to protect their legal rights at workplace.