The Elderly and Old Age Support inRural China : Challenges and Prospects

Cai, Fang ; Giles, John ; O'Keefe, Philip ; Wang, Dewen

Washington, DC:World Bank

关键词: ABSOLUTE TERMS;    ACCESS TO GOVERNMENT;    AGE DISTRIBUTION;    AGING POPULATIONS;    BASIC BENEFIT;   

DOI  :  10.1596/978-0-8213-8685-9
RP-ID  :  67522

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Although average incomes in China haverisen dramatically since the 1980s, concerns are increasingthat the rural elderly have not benefited from growth to thesame extent as younger people and the urban elderly.Concerns about welfare of the rural elderly combine spatialand demographic issues. Large gaps exist between conditionsin coastal and interior regions and between conditions inurban and rural areas of the country. In addition todifferences in income by geography, considerable differencesexist across demographic groups in the level of coverage bysafety nets, in the benefits received through the socialwelfare system, and in the risks of falling into poverty.This book aims to do two things: first, it provides detailedempirical analysis of the welfare and living conditions ofthe rural elderly since the early 1990s in the context oflarge-scale rural-to-urban migration, and second, itexplores the evolution of the rural pension system in Chinaover the past two decades and raises a number of issues onits current implementation and future directions. Althoughthe two sections of the book are distinct in analyticalterms, they are closely linked in policy terms: the firstsection demonstrates in several ways a rationale for greaterpublic intervention in the welfare of the rural elderly, andthe second documents the response of policy to date andoptions to consider for deepening the coverage and effectsof the rural pension system over the longer term.