October 2026
12Oct

China’s Retirement Wave Is Here. The Pension Math Is Brutal

In 2022, people born in 1962 began turning 60. That was the start. Since then, more than 20 million people a year reach retirement age in China. On an average day, about 60,000 people stop working and start collecting a pension. This will continue for more than a decade. Between 1962 and 1975, China averaged 25.83 million births a year, about 320 million people total. In 1963 alone, 29.34 million babies were born, the highest number in nearly 70 years....

October 12, 2026
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09Oct

The impact of pension on the health behavior of elderly rural residents: evidence from China

By Rui Li, Duanyang Gao & Yuying Yang Background Unhealthy behavior is an important factor threatening the health of older rural residents in China. We examine the effects of receiving pension on elderly rural residents’ health behavior (namely conscious control of sugar, salt, and edible oil intake, as well as learning health or wellness knowledge), also including effect heterogeneity by income level and gender. Methods Using China Rural Revitalization Survey (CRRS) in 2020, we used the policy rule of the...

October 9, 2026
Adequacy, Articles, , ,
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09Oct

Does a Better Pension Buy Better Health? China’s Age-60 Threshold Says Not Necessarily

For decades, policymakers and economists have assumed a fairly intuitive chain of causation: a more generous pension means more money in old age, more money means better food, better care, less stress, and therefore better health. A new study drawing on nationwide Chinese survey data puts that assumption under an unusually rigorous statistical microscope, and the results are strikingly deflationary. Using the 2022 wave of the China Family Panel Studies, or CFPS, researchers Qing Li and Xiaojing Huang of...

October 9, 2026
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September 2026
01Sep

Global pension asset allocations and debt markets

Pension fund investors have been typically viewed as some of the most dependable investors in global bond markets. Their long-term obligations make government and corporate debt a natural fit: bonds offer predictable income which matches future retirement payments, and support relatively stable portfolios. However, that relationship is changing. Recent research has shown that demand shifts by pensions move asset prices and that they in turn respond to yield curves. For example, Aldunate et al. (2025) show that Chilean pension...

September 1, 2026
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August 2026
31Aug

An aging population in China inspires a new industry: Adult children for hire

Available for rent to a lonely grandparent: the companionship of an adult child. In China, where a low fertility rate and a rapidly aging population are swelling the number of lonely elders, young men and women are hiring themselves out as “shared” or “outsourced” children. These surrogates, mostly in their 20s and 30s, provide companionship rather than specialized medical care, visiting, chatting, helping clients set up smartphones or accompanying them to medical appointments. Advertisements abound on Chinese social media, where rates...

August 31, 2026
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21Aug

Job displacement and the health of older adults: Evidence from China

By Xiaoyun Zhang & Yiyang Luo This paper investigates the long-term consequences of involuntary job displacement on multidimensional health outcomes among middle-aged and older adults in urban China, using the 2014 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey (CHARLS) Life History Questionnaire. To address the endogeneity of job loss, we exploit business closures, position cancellations, and layoffs during the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) reforms in the late 1990s as exogenous labor market shocks and employ Propensity Score Matching (PSM) to control for...

August 21, 2026
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06Aug

China. Private pen­sion sys­tem seen in need of upgrade

How much sav­ings does a per­son in China need for retire­ment? A report released by Sun Life Fin­an­cial Inc, based on a quant­it­at­ive sur­vey of 3,201 respond­ents and more than 20 expert inter­views, found that 65 per­cent of respond­ents believe 1 mil­lion yuan ($148,200) is suf­fi­cient. However, the report estim­ates that a retiree spend­ing an aver­age of 5,000 yuan per month over a 30-year retire­ment would need at least 1.8 mil­lion yuan, assum­ing no infla­tion. Data released by the National...

August 6, 2026
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July 2026
10Jul

The China Imbalance Residual: A Demographic Decomposition

By Brian Peters The Chinese current-account surplus has averaged approximately 2 percent of GDP since 2015, declining from a 2007 peak near 10 percent yet remaining far above what its income level and demographic structure would predict in a global panel. We estimate this gap as the residual against the income-conditional demographic baseline fitted on 140 countries with China held out. The residual averages +5 to +12 percentage points of GDP across four sub-periods of 2000-2024, peaks at +14.3 pp...

July 10, 2026
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10Jul

China targets stable employment, enhanced social security in next five years

China aims to create a considerable scale of urban jobs and keep the urban surveyed unemployment rate within 5.5 percent over the next five years, according to a human resources and social security development plan for the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030) unveiled on Thursday. The plan, released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, sets seven major goals and 18 quantified indicators. "Employment will be kept generally stable, with new progress in high-quality and sufficient employment," said...

July 10, 2026
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07Jul

China’s gig economy absorbs laid off workers and strains the social safety net

In Beijing, Bao Zhang started driving for a Chinese ride-hailing service this year after losing his job as a software tester, and says the weak labor market gives him little hope of returning to the IT sector. His story is becoming increasingly common in China, where millions are moving from official employment to the gig economy due to scant unemployment insurance, a record number of graduates, and a shortage of jobs that is squeezing employment opportunities. Those who previously used taxis...

July 7, 2026
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