Aging China: The Demographic Challenge to China's Economic Prospects - Hardcover

by Robert Stowe England (Author)

China, the world's most populous nation, will enter a period of rapid aging very shortly that will redefine that country. Between 2010 and 2040, the portion of people 65 and older will rise from around 7% to between 25 and 30% of the population. As China ages, can it retain the youthful dynamism now driving it?

China, the world's most populous nation, will enter a period of rapid aging very shortly that will redefine that country. Between 2010 and 2040, the number of people 65 and older will rise from around 7% to between 25 and 30% of the population. As China ages, can it retain the youthful dynamism now driving it? This book is an effort to try to capture the broad outlines of the significant economic, market, social, and demographic factors that will shape the future of China and the role that aging will play in the whole mix of influences.

Aging in developed societies and economies has been widely studied. In such nations as Japan, Germany, Italy, and Spain, for example, we know that as populations age, their societies decline, leaving fewer younger workers to support the growing number of people who will become dependent on costly health care systems, or whose basic needs, such as food and shelter, will need to be subsidized. But less work has been done in assessing the potential impact of aging in developing countries, where the majority of people may be working poor, not middle class--as in the case of China. As China restructures its economy, the old benefits packages previously available to urban workers (and not rural workers) are being replaced by a patchwork of benefits across a wide range of enterprises.

Author Biography

Robert Stowe England has been a financial editor and journalist for more than 20 years. Since 1999 he has served as Director of Research for the Global Aging Initiative (GAI) at CSIS. England has written extensively on employee benefits, retirement, and pensions in a variety of journals and magazines and has written a number of research papers on retirement issues. He has also written often on business strategy, banking, corporate finance, the economy, and foreign affairs. He was the author of three white papers for GAI that were published as monographs for CSIS in 2002: The Fiscal Challenge of an Aging Industrial World, Global Aging and Financial Markets: Hard Landings Ahead? and The Macroeconomic Impact of Global Aging: A New Era of Economic Frailty? England has also been a featured speaker on aging issues at forums around the globe.