NADS Held the Round Table Conference Themed "The Trends, Results and Solutions of Aging of Population in China"

On 14th April, the round table conference "The trends, results and solutions of aging of population in China" was successfully held by Center for Labor Market Research of NADS. This lecture was moderated by researcher Wang Fei, Lecturer of School of Labor and Human Resources. Professor Li Jianxin from Peking University and Professor Han Keqin and Zhao Zhong from RUC attend this discussion.

In recent years, aging has become the unavoidable problems faced by the whole world, offering the serious challenges to macro-economy regulation, labor market and social welfare. China has implemented many policies including Universal Two-Child Policy to reduce the level of aging. At the same time, China's aging trend, how bad results it will produce and what kind of measures should be taken remain the significant problem attracting general attention.

Researcher Wang Fei pointed out that with the low birth rate and death rate in recent years, the proportion of aged people has been increasing rapidly and constantly. The prioporation of population aged above 65 has reached 7% in 2000. If aged people increased at the average speed of past 10 years, it is expected that our country will become aging society in 2027 and hyper-aged society in 2047. The influence of population aging has reflected on 4 aspects as followed.

Firstly, it aggravated the pension burden; trans-regional mobilization made regional pension unbalance more serious. Secondly, Health care burdens are more and more aggravated. Thirdly, because labor population has to shoulder more pension burden, the productivity of labor may decrease and the shortage of labor would emerge in the future. Fourthly, it will exert negative impact on economic growth, lead to the whole labor population and structure unmatched the economic structure, hurt the enthusiasm of enterprises and increase deficit and debt burden. Population policy can decelerate aging at most. More importantly, since aging cannot be avoided, we should reform social welfare policy to better support old people, improve health care policy to reduce the public and personal cost, make full use of market and social resources to improve socialized endowment system and then make old people healthier and happier, and change economic and industrial policies to match economic development with aging trend and enhance producing technology and productivity.

After the lecture, experts and scholars from related fields conducted in-depth discussion on aging problem. Professor Li Jianxin from Peking University agreed a series of views in the Wang Fei's report and pointed out that the historical misjudgment on birth rate and death rate lead to underestimated evaluation for aging. Professor Han Keqin from RUC pointed out that the rapid economic growth and Second Child Policy are conducive to neutralize the negative influence brought by aging, but the implementation of delayed retirement and long-term care policy need to be cautiously considered. Besides, he stressed the significance of family restructuring. Professor Zhao Zhong from RUC pointed out that two kinds of demographic dividends can be used to solve the aging problems. First one is that low birth rate means there are more people can enter labor market, so we can encourage it by delaying retirement, improving education system, increase female labor force participation rate and changing household registration system. Second one is that aging can increase capital per capita and productivity.

Representatives from multiple media and teachers and students from universities at home and abroad attended this conference and exchange ideas with presented experts and scholars.