In a first in decades in the world’s second most populous country threatened by a serious demographic crisis, China’s legal retirement age will be gradually raised, the official Xinhua news agency announced Friday.
China’s population is set to decline for the second year in a row in 2023, signaling serious problems for the economy, health care and welfare systems, with a growing number of senior citizens and a sharp drop in births.
The legal retirement age for men will gradually be raised to 63, from the current 60, and that for women will go from 50 to 55, or from 55 to 58, depending on the type of work done, the agency said, citing a government decision. The increase will be spread over 15 years starting in 2025, it said.
Delaying the departure of employees
The new rules will also allow employees to “delay their retirement to an even later date if they reach an agreement with employers,” adds Xinhua.
In addition, starting in 2030, the minimum number of years of work that qualifies for a retirement pension will increase from 15 to 20 years, at a rate of six additional months each year. Before Friday’s announcement, state media had been preparing minds by publishing articles extolling the merits of working longer.
“This reform will adapt to the objective situation, which is a general increase in life expectancy and the number of years of education in our country,” stated an article in the People’s Daily, organ of the Chinese Communist Party.
Raising the retirement age “is an inevitable choice,” Mo Rong, director of the China Academy of Labor and Social Security, told People’s Daily. The change “will lead to stabilizing the labor force participation rate (and) maintaining the momentum and vitality of economic and social development,” he said.