Rod Hunter looks at economist Robert Shapiro's predictions. An excerpt:
In Europe and Japan, where labor forces are already shrinking, fewer workers will have to pay more taxes to support the growing pensioner population, triggering a vicious economic cycle. Workers will have less money to save. That will mean less investment, which will translate into slower productivity growth and sluggish income progress, making it ever harder for the fewer workers to support the pensions of more seniors.
China will face similar challenges. Thanks to its notorious one-child policy, it has the world’s most rapidly aging population: between 2005 and 2020, the number of Chinese aged 65 and over will grow by 65 percent. China does not offer much government support for its elderly, which may lead to unrest, particularly among seniors living in urban centers such as Beijing and Shanghai.
2 comments:
Not to be vicious, but what kind of unrest can 65+ Chinese citizens cause? Their health system is fairly decrepit, so it's not as if the government will have to deal with vital 65+ year olds.
My understanding is that the "respect for elders" thinking that seemed to be a cornerstone of Chinese society has been eroding rapidly and that the continual migration to urban manufacturing areas there has also affected strong familial ties.
Hmmmm, after all of the outsourcing we've been doing, perhaps the next great change will be the outsourcing from China to the USA of elderly care facilities for their soon to be huge 65+ citizens. I'm sure there's a Johnathan Swift essay that'll come out of this aging thing.
Swift would have a field day!
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