1、Expert: Delay Retirement Age to Cope with Aging SocietyUpdated Sep 21 2006 09:56:14 Beijing TimeSource: XinhuaChina needs to adopt a package of measures, including postponing the retirement age, to deal with the aging of the population, said a renowned Chinese expert. “The retirement age for men and
2、 women should be postponed to 63 or 65 or even further to deal with a labour shortfall,“ said Hu Angang, director of the National Conditions Research Center of Tsinghua University. Under Chinese law, a man retires at 60, women cadres at 55 and women workers at 50. Chinas Social Sciences Academic Pre
3、ss published a book, which contains research reports by Hu Angang and other leading Chinese experts on the issue of aging population, last month. It predicts that by the middle of this century, there will be more than 400 million senior citizens over 60, or 30 percent of the entire population. By th
4、en, every two workers will need to provide for one senior citizen. “One of the direct results of the aging society is a drop in the labor force supply, which leads to an overall reshaping of society,“ said Gu Baochang, professor of the population and development center of prestigious Renmin Universi
5、ty in Beijing. In the book, the experts also recommend improving education to enhance the skills of the workforce, which may partly offset the influence of a labor force decrease, and improving the health system. A report on senior citizens, released by a national work committee in February this yea
6、r, says that China entered the aging society in 1999 when citizens aged over 60 exceeded 10 percent of the total population for the first time. This was “too early“ and has left China ill-prepared. Developed countries started to age after carrying out modernization, and with per capita GDP of 5,000
7、to 10,000 U.S. dollars. By contrast, China has entered the aging society without having fully modernized and its economy is still undeveloped, with per capita GDP just over US,000. It therefore lacks the economic muscle needed to tackle the aging issue.Dec. 12 - China said Tuesday that creating welf
8、are programs for its soaring numbers of elderly is a national priority, but warned that will be a daunting challenge in a rapidly graying society. The government has launched pension, health care and other programs for the elderly, the Cabinet said in a report on aging. It didnt mention any new init
9、iatives. “China regards the establishment of an old-age security system corresponding to the level of the countrys socio-economic development and aging population as an important task and a priority area,“ it said. “However, as a developing country with a population of 1.3 billion, China still has p
10、roblems and shortcomings in the work concerning elderly people,“ the report said. The number of elderly Chinese people is expected to top 200 million by 2015 and 280 million by 2025. Some 30 percent of the population would be classified as elderly by 2050, the Communist Party newspaper Peoples Daily
11、 said in October. Rapid economic development has also weakened traditional thinking that requires sons to support parents in their old age, while daughters are expected to aid only their in-law. Rural families are especially dependent on children to support them in old age, and the report said 60 pe
12、rcent of Chinas elderly live in the countryside. The government “has begun to study the establishment of an old-age social security system in rural areas in order to guarantee the basic livelihood of the elderly people there,“ the report said.本文来自: 疯狂英语(urlwww.crazyenglish.org/url) 详细出处参考：http:/www.
13、crazyenglish.org/xinwen/zuixinbaodao/20070914/13147.htmlChina to further tackle aging societyBEIJING - A total of 123 million Chinese were aged over 65 by the end of 2011, about 9.1 percent of the total population, the Health Aging Symposium announced Saturday.Chinese seniors aged 80 or above are ex
14、pected to take up 30 percent of the population aged 65 or above in 2050, and the ratio of working-aged Chinese to the countrys seniors will drop from 10:1 in 2000 to 2.8:1 in 2050, the symposium said.According to the statistics provided by the World Health Organization (WHO), the number of people in
15、 the world aged over 60 has doubled since 1980, and by 2050, the number of people aged 80 or above will have reached 395 million, four times the current figure.The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimated that in the next five years, the number of adults in the world aged 65 or above will ou
16、tnumber children under the age of five for the first time, especially in developing countries.France took 100 years to double its population aged above 65 from 7 percent to 14 percent, while countries such as China and Brazil only took 25 years to achieve the same growth, the UNFPA said.Rao Keqin, s
17、ecretary of the Party committee of Chinese Medical Association, pointed out that in developed countries, their societies age with economic development, and the GDP per capita is above $5,000.“China, however, has become an aging society without realizing modernization nor a developed economy,“ Rao sa
18、id.According to a survey done by the China Research Center on Aging in 2011, two thirds of the seniors above 60 are living with illness, with 33 million seniors partially disabled or totally disabled.“The aging process presents societies with enormous challenges related to economic structure and gro
19、wth, health care and social security,“ said Arie Hoekman, UNFPA Representative in China.Governments need to respond to these challenges by promoting diversified support systems to ensure that families and communities can support the elderly to live healthy and active lives, he added.Yin Li, Vice hea
20、lth Minister said at the symposium that Chinas Ministry of Health will further provide basic health services to the older people to ensure their access to health care services.In the next five years, China will add 3.42 million more hospital beds for the elderly, encouraging all grassroots medical i
21、nstitutions to provide health services for older people and to monitor the health conditions of people aged 65 or above, Yin said.World Health Day falls on April 7 every year, the anniversary of the founding of the World Health Organization. The topic of this year is Aging and health with the theme “Good health adds life to years.“
