Chinese population: 12%+ aged 60 or older

[zzzz]

China is grapling with what to do with the elderly. They even have a draft law about seniors.

The draft law on senior citizens, which requires people to visit their aged parents regularly to help fulfill their emotional and spiritual needs, indicates that taking care of senior citizens has become a serious problem in China.

It only took 18 years from China's population to go from being relatively young to being elderly.

The number of people aged 60 years and above in China has risen to 160 million, or more than 12 percent of the total population. An aging society, according to international standards, is one that has more than 10 percent of its population above the age of 60.

Debate: Aging population

I doubt they will base their senior citizen care on our system.

 

[waltky]

Granny says the weight of all dem Chinese gonna make the earth rotate cattywompus on its axis - cause a polar shift...

Chinese population reaches preliminary record of 1.34 billion
Tue, Mar 01, 2011 - China’s population grew to 1.34 billion people last year, the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics announced yesterday, marking a modest jump for a massive population and leading experts to suggest the country could relax its generation-old one-child policy.

The figure of 1.341 billion, which is preliminary and based on a sample survey, indicates that China added about 6.3 million people last year, up from 1.3347 billion at the end of 2009. A more accurate figure is expected to be released within the next few months, after the government tallies the results of last year’s census, the first in 10 years. Since 1981, the government has limited families in cities to one child and rural parents to two to control population growth.

“China’s population now is mainly growing because people are living longer, not because people are having lots of babies,” said Cai Yong, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and an expert on China’s population. Cai said the figure reported on the National Bureau of Statistics Web site fell at the low end of government expectations. It could embolden policy makers to experiment with loosening the family planning policy he said.

China’s population growth has contracted since 1987, and the US Census Bureau has projected it will peak at slightly less than 1.4 billion in 2026, with India overtaking China as the world’s most populous nation in 2025. Experts attribute the slowing growth rate to the strict family planning limits and to the country’s urbanization and growing prosperity. Cai said allowing more births now would help the country cope with looking after its large and growing elderly population.

Wang Feng, director of the Tsinghua-Brookings Center for Public Policy in Beijing, calculated that the population figure for last year reflects a growth rate of 4.7 people per thousand, compared with 5.5 per thousand in 2009. “This just continues a declining trend for the growth rate,” Wang said. “It’s getting lower every year.”

Source