3-Child Policy, Raising Retirement Age Won’t Solve China’s Pension Deficit

A grandmother carries her granddaughter outside the tourist mecca of Yangshuo, in southern China’s Guangxi Province, on Oct. 1, 2003. Peter Parks/AFP via Getty Images

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has changed its notorious one-child policy to allow for three children and said it would raise the retirement age to resolve the huge pension deficit and dramatic decline in births. However, economists and experts say these methods can’t resolve the deficit nor the issue of the country’s aging population.

China has been an aging society since 2000, with the rise in average age accelerating significantly over the past 10 years. China’s working population is projected to decrease to 795 million in 2050—20 percent less than in 2010—as long as China’s fertility rate doesn’t decline, according to Dong Keyong, human resource professor at Renmin University of China.