Foreign experts advise postponing retirement, raising birth rate

As China is losing its demographic dividend due to an aging population, some foreign experts suggested that the country postpone retirement and raise the birth rate.

During his research, Andrew Mason, a professor of economics from the University of Hawaii-Manoa, found that elderly people in China struggled to accumulate assets like their peers in some foreign countries who could continue to support their children.

"The retirement age in China is too young," he said. "They have more years to contribute."

He noted that in the United States, elderly people could work for as long as they liked and as a trade off for retiring later, they could get a higher yearly pension.

Chinese people retire at 55 or 60. By the end of 2013 there were more than 202 million seniors aged 60 and over, or nearly 15 percent of the total population.

Mason's view was shared by Ronald Lee, director of UC Berkeley's Center for the Demography and Economics of Aging.

"Elderly people in China are much healthier now, due to better nutrition," he said. "They could work until 65 or 70. They should be given a choice."

Lee also lauded China's relaxation of the one-child policy, as the country now allows couples with one spouse being an only child to have two children.

"A birth rate of 1.65 children to one mother would be better," he said. Chinese experts believe that the rate now floats between 1.5 and 1.6.

"China is moving in the right direction," Mason said. "Further relaxing [measures] will be good."

Both experts' suggestions came during interviews with Xinhua on the sidelines of the International Symposium on Demographic Change and Policy Response on Thursday and Friday in Beijing.

Cai Fang, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a famous demographer in China, agreed that later retirement and further relaxation of the one-child policy would definitely be the direction of reform for the future.

"But for the time being there are obstacles," he said.

According to Cai, people nearing retirement were not well educated, as China only reintroduced the college entrance exam in 1977, following the Cultural Revolution.

"They are not competitive enough to face the younger generation," he said. "They look forward to retirement."

Regarding raising the birth rate, professor Cai told Xinhua that although many couples could have a second child now, they opted out.

"I did not see an obvious baby boom after the revision of the policy," he said.

Although 11 million couples have been granted a permit to have a second child since the country relaxed its family planning policy at the end of last year, statistics from the National Health and Family Planning Commission shows that only 700,000 had filed birth applications.

Ronald Lee believed that the cost of raising a child is high in China, although more has been invested in education and health care in recent years.

"In the United States, education is done by the public sector while private expenditure is very low," he said, calling for a larger public sector.

Andrew Mason also stressed the role education would play in coping with the declining labor force. "Quality of tertiary education should be improved," he said, agreeing that maybe later, people in China would be willing and able to work longer.