Annotated Bibliography－The Aging Problem in China Report
Aging population has been stressed as an increasingly serious problem in China whose aging process is criticized of not fitting with its overall developmental level.
Demographic data has not only presented the huge amount of the aged, but also indicated a worsening trend which warns the country to copy with this problem. The following bibliography explores four articles that address the impacts of aging population in China in three aspects, economy, society and the government.
Jackson, R. (2011). Can an Aging China Be a Rising China? The China Business Review, 58: 32-38.
Richard Jackson (2011), a senior fellow of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, points out that the increasing aging problem will have huge negative effects on the development of China. He analyses the factors of economic growing strategies over the last decades, and indicates that owing to the population transformation, the original advantageous would lose their efficacy rapidly. With a group of figures, which shows the comparison of the elderly (age 65 and older) share of the population between China and America, he suggests that China will have an older population than the United States and predicts that the aging problem would slow down the economic growth rate from several aspects in terms of the employment, the saving rates, the foreign investment, the capital market and so on, thus leading to the economic
instability. Besides that, the poor social insurance system would raise pressure to the social and political stability.
Jackson’s specific explanation of the potential attributions to the slower economical growth rate in the future could provide valuable information related to the issues of economic instability analysis section of the report task. Moreover, the figures citing in the article, which both collect the figures in the past and preview the trend of aging number in the future, provide authority data for our deep analysis and make our evidence more convincing to the readers.
Hong, L. (2011). The influence of aging population on China’s economy in the information society. China Economic Review, 22 (2011), 98–107.
The author, Hong (2011), at Harbin University of Science and Technology evaluated the challenges brought by aging population in China, including the increase in terms of expenditure on basic pension insurance, medical expenses of the elderly, and the need for social services for the elderly. Moreover, he claims that compared with cities, the aging in countryside creates more problems. He used data from 2000 to 2007 for analysis, and the result showed a positive relevance between expenditure of insurance and medical care with the percentage of the population older than 60 years. Based on the impacts, strategies to address the problems are developed by the author. He points out that retirement age should be postponed, and basic pension and medical care insurance policy
should be extended and intensified. In addition, government should extend various social service systems to meet the needs of the aging population.
Hong’s concise article contributes to the existing literature and our research in a number of ways. It provides us several most impotent influences of aging population, which can be regarded as a topical support for our research. Secondly, by using the annuities systems of United States as an example of how developed counties address aging problem, Hong has done an excellent job of comparing different aging related policies with that of China, which would back up our solution section. Furthermore, he emphasized the background of information society, thus developed strategies which are up to the date. However, the paper can be criticized for neglecting a significant aspect of economical influence which is related to the labor shortage and the challenge of productivity decline. This paper is also lack of specific strategies for tackling the socio-economic challenges of an aging population.
Li, M. (2011). The Impact of China’s Aging Population, Seri Quarterly. 4.4: 25-33, 8. Li (2011) describes several social impacts aroused by the rapidly China’s aging population without a decent economic foundation. The writer states that the long-term care for their elderly parents by the one-child generation has become less feasible, because of the consequence of China’s population policy which causes the lack of manpower in these families. In addition, he claims that the economic pressure from the health care expenses on the one-child families has been regarded as a significant effect.
In consideration of the low family income, the recommendation of dependence on the government's pension system to meet the health and long-term care has been produced. Presently, in the geriatric field, the irrational distribution of China’s health care resources and the rapid development of urbanization have led to this situation that the Chinese health system is undergoing serious physician and nurse shortages. According to the social predicament, Li concludes that China will face more potential challenges for solving aging problems by sustainable methods in the future.
In this article, Li (2011) presents some reasonable views about the effects of aging China from different aspects, especially in the social field. He provides abundant statistical data and the predicting trend to adequately demonstrate the influence of one-child policy on the aging society. The writer accurately points out that many young couples have to support their parents and even their grandparents without any siblings to share the pressure. Through analyzing the China’s current pension system and the rising health care expenses, Li clearly indicates that the underlying economic problems exist in the one-child families. In the comparison of the different distribution of medical resources between the rural and the urban, he successfully identifies the potential threat to the rising health care demand which is increased by the large number of aging population. Despite of these sufficient insights of social issues in sustainability, this study lacks possible suggestions or solutions.
Liao, X. (2009). GUEST COLUMN: China's aging population poses challenges for health care reform. Interfax: China Pharmaceuticals & Health Technologies Weekly [Hong Kong].
Liao X (2009), deputy director of the Guangdong provincial Health Bureau, demonstrates that the Chinese government is facing the challenge posed by the rapidly aging population when implementing health care reform. Firstly, he states that the increasing aging population would result in corresponding higher medical expenses as studies indicate that the medical costs of the old are three or five times that of others. Besides that, he also points out another factor exacerbating this challenge. That is the imbalance between urban and rural areas. Due to the widespread population mobility from countryside to cities and the young generations’ trend to living in developed regions, the aging problem in rural areas seems to be increasingly aggravated. Considering these factors, he suggests that the government should adjust the structure of health care system and optimize the regional allocation of medical resources.
Liao’s (2009) concise review is important for the study of the government’s pressure exerted by the aging issue. By comparing the different reasons of the aging population between China and developed countries, he explains that the aging problem in China is more challenging because of residents’ low income. His article contains a wealth of findings including different medical expenses between the elderly and young people, as well as the results of the National Health Service Survey which indicate a rising trend in the frequency of old people getting ill. In addition, he comes up with useful suggestions for the government to deal with this challenge. Although he attributing China’s aging
population to the one-child policy is one-sided to some extent, and the explanation of the regional imbalance of the aging problem can be criticized for not mentioning the underdeveloped medical services in rural areas, his work provides support for the impacts section of our report.