Retirement age should be raised, says official
Print Edition
Raising the retirement age in China should be made a priority, an official said yesterday.
Hu Xiaoyi, deputy minister of human resources and social security, said that considering China’s current development stage and some emerging problems, raising the retirement age in progressive steps must go on the government agenda.
The retirement age in China is 60 for men and 55 or 50 for women, according to regulations, some of which have been in effect since the 1950s.
Back then, life expectancy was only around 40 years, so the rules made sense, Hu said.
“Public health has greatly improved and life expectancy is now 74 years. With the improvement of working conditions, the average intensity of labor is much lower now,” Hu said.
Hu said the average retirement age for Chinese men and women working in enterprises was 54.
“This is obviously too low,” he said.
Meanwhile, there have been subtle changes in the country’s labor market, he said.
In 2012, the size of China’s working population, those aged from 15 to 59, dropped for the first time by 3.45 million from a year earlier. The proportion of working people in the total population dropped by 0.6 percentage points, a recent report showed.
The shrinking labor pool is cutting into China’s traditional labor cost advantage, which is partly credited for its rapid growth over the past three decades.
This sent out a signal that China’s labor force will gradually decrease, Hu said.
The country is also seeing a fast aging process, as the ratio of labor force to the aged population dropped from 6.85:1 in 2007 to 4.83:1 in 2012, he said.
A reform plan released last month made it clear that China would research and formulate policies on progressively raising the retirement age in an effort to push for a more equitable and sustainable social security system.
Hu said the use of “progressive” in the reform plan requires the ministry to let people know about policy changes in advance.
“We cannot announce a policy this year and implement it next year, but allow a necessary period of time for the public, especially those who are about to retire, to get prepared,” Hu said.
The reform should be divided into steps, such as beginning with those entitled to the lowest retirement age and then expanding to the remainder, he said.
“We should take tiny steps,” Hu said, adding that the country could postpone retirement by a few months each year to ensure a smooth transition.
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