Caring for the aged
http://www.huanqiu.com 来源：新华网 进入论坛 2007-12-19 16:19
BEIJING, Dec. 18 -- How a society cares for its aged population can be taken as a measure of its civility.
The results of a survey of people over the age of 60 were released yesterday. They suggested that life for the aged residents of both urban and rural areas has improved considerably since 2000, when the last survey was conducted.
By the end of last year, the proportion of aged people in urban areas with pensions had increased to 78.0 percent from 69.1 percent in 2000. That number grew to 4.8 percent from 3.3 percent in rural areas. Income from pensions also increased during the period, growing by 61.8 percent in cities and 64.9 percent in the countryside.
The percentages of aged urban and rural people living below the level afforded by local basic living allowances also decreased by large margins compared with 2000.
However, despite these achievements, the reality is that the country is under increasingly heavy pressure to provide a comfortable life for its growing aged population.
The share of the population above the age of 60 exceeded 146 million at the end of last year, accounting for 11.3 percent of the total. That represented an increase of 1.1 percentage points compared with the 10.2 percent spike in 2000. The figure will grow to 174 million by 2010, accounting for 12.8 percent of the country's total population.
The disparity between the increasingly high expectations that people have about being able to rely on social security as they grow older and the poor state of the country's social security system creates still more pressure.
The tradition of relying on one's offspring in old age is changing. More than half of all aged urban residents choose social security pensions as their major source of income during retirement. In the countryside, 11.8 percent of all elderly people said they planned to rely on social security, compared with 5.1 percent in 2000.
Unfortunately, only 4.8 percent of aged rural residents have access to pensions. And there are still 1.35 million elderly city dwellers who make less than they need to cover the costs of their daily lives.
It will be a big challenge to build a basic pension system to cover most aged rural residents and increase pensions for the urban retired. The situation will be a test of our government's governance capabilities.
