Changes and Challenges of Population Aging in China

Xiaochun Qiao, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chirayath Suchindran, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The objective of this paper is to project the age structure changes in China, to portray China's aging processes over the first half of the 21st century, and to analyze the potential challenges of the population aging to China's development. The new data from the 2000 national population census will be used to project the population changes. It concludes that both sharp transitions in both the age structures and transitions in the socioeconomic institutions will accompany the aging problems in China in the early years of the century. The combination of these two components-together with the increasing number of elderly citizens, the lack of infrastructure, poverty, and labor outflow-will make the problems of aging more serious in China than in any other country in the world, where such rapid aging and institutional transitions are not occurring as they are in China.