Beijing: Beijing’s population of people aged 60 years or older surged to 3.71 million at the end of 2019, accounting for 17.2 percent of the megacity’s total population, among which the number of female seniors is five percent higher than that of male elders, according to a report released by the municipal government on Sunday.
The report pointed out that Beijing is accelerating into an “aged society”, due to its huge population base and increased rate of the city’s aging population. In 2015, the city had 3.4 million people aged 60 or above, accounting for 15.7 percent of the total population, but the population added 308,000 in just four years. The estimated average life expectancy of Beijing residents stood at 82.31 in 2019.
Under the WHO and UN standard, when a society has more than seven percent of the population aged 65 or older, it’s labeled an “aging society”; when the proportion of aged population exceeds 14 percent, it’s an “aged society” and when it surpasses 21 percent, the society is a “super-aged society.”
In Beijing, the population aged 100 or over has surpassed 1,000, reaching 1,046. Those over the age of 80 increased by 47,000 to end up at 631,000 at the end of 2019.
Among this number of population aged 60 or older, males made up 47 percent, while females constituted 52 percent.
The report highlighted that the pressure on working-age people to take care of the aging population has intensified, with the dependency rate (ratio of older people to younger people) increasing to 44.3 percent, meaning an average of 2.3 working-age people have to take care of one elder in the city.
Besides Beijing, northeastern China’s Liaoning Province has almost one-fourth of its population aged 60 or older, while Shandong, Chongqing, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang have already had over 14 percent of its population aged 65 or older, the baseline of an “aged society.”
Additionally, five other provinces in 2019 have over 13 percent of its population aged 65 or over, a step away from an “aged society.” Experts predict that the country will enter an “aged society” in 2022.
Official data shows that there were 254 million people aged 60 or over nationwide at the end of 2019, accounting for 18.1 percent of the total population, and the population aged 65 or over stood at 176 million.
China’s population is aging faster than almost any other country in modern history. It took France and Sweden, the earliest developed countries to enter the aged society phase, 115 years and 85 years respectively to reach this mark, while it’s only taken China 22 years to transit from from an “aging society” to an “aged society”. National data estimated that China will enter a super-aged society in 2035 with 22.3 percent of population aged 65 or over and the number will peak in 2050, accounting for 27.9 percent of the total population.
–The Daily Mail-CGTN
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