Focus on active aging

As China becomes a super-aged society, it needs to increase the employment opportunities for older people

With continued population aging that has caused an aging workforce and structural labor shortages, tapping the human capital among older people has become a major means for China to actively cope with population aging.

As one of the nations that are at the forefront of population aging, Japan has also been plagued by a shrinking workforce and insufficient pension funds. To this end, the Japanese government has been going all out to build a policy system aimed at increasing employment opportunities for older people. The system consists of three major aspects, which are closely interconnected and supportive of each other. The first aspect is to motivate older people's employment willingness via reform of pension schemes, in particular by continuously raising the pension age to encourage them to stay longer in the labor market.

The second aspect is to ensure that older persons have access to equal employment opportunities via rights protection for continued employment, mainly by postponing retirement age, prohibiting age discrimination, encouraging older people to start their own businesses, providing unemployment insurance, and exploring new forms of continued employment after retirement, etc. The third aspect is to promote lifelong learning and vocational ability development to support older persons' post-retirement employment, mainly by enhancing their ability in continuing to participate in the labor market.

Japan's policy system for promoting elderly employment is not accomplished in an action, but follows nearly 80 years of reform endeavors. Japan has unveiled the Act on Stabilization of Employment of Elderly Persons and the Basic Law on Measures for the Aging Society, among others, providing institutional guarantee for older people's rights and interests at the workplace. Japan's policy reform has been advanced step by step, such as giving buffer a period for businesses on ways of postponing the retirement age to cushion against the impact of policy changes.

Furthermore, Japan has been providing all-round support for the employment of older people, by, on the one hand, developing diversified employment opportunities based on older persons' unique needs and, on the other hand, ensuring their rights to education to enhance their vocational capability.

China and Japan share a lot of similarities when it comes to their senior citizens' growing employment rate, industries of employment and patterns of employment. China is currently building its own system for encouraging older people's employment. But given that China is expected to become a super-aged society — when over 20 percent of its population is in the 65-or-over group — faster than Japan, it will need to develop and improve a policy system in less time than Japan. Further compounding the issue are China's great regional and urban-rural disparity and its much larger older population than Japan's. Therefore, while learning from Japan's experience in coping with population aging, we should also take into full account China's local context.

To start with, China should vigorously advocate the concept of active aging to comprehensively enhance social recognition of tapping seniors as a human resource. To effectively postpone retirement age and promote the implementation of pro-employment policies for senior citizens, we need to get business cooperation and social recognition. This requires all-round and in-depth population aging education for businesses and throughout the society — replacing negative perceptions toward aging with positive ones such as healthy aging, active aging and productive aging, changing the narrative that "elderly employment reduces job opportunities for youth", and increasing the recognition of the value of human capital among older people.

In particular, we should attach importance to eliminating age discrimination against senior citizens in the labor market, protecting their legitimate rights in continuing to participate in the labor market, and building an age-friendly employment and social environment.

Second, the postponement of the retirement age should be advanced in sync with improvements in the social security system, so as to stimulate older people to postpone retirement. Tapping the human resource potential in the older workforce cannot solely rely on the postponement of retirement age, but should also depend on other supportive policies. In particular, it requires the social security system to make adjustments when a nation wants to enhance people's willingness to delay retirement, such as proportionally increasing the old-age pension after retirement and allowing older adults that have reached the retirement age to flexibly choose their retirement age based on their own conditions and wish.

Third, China should beef up institutional guarantees for employees to make work more appealing to older people. We should improve social security for informal workers and provide better protection of the rights and interests of post-retirement employees in re-employment or continued employment to make work more appealing to them. The improvement of legislation on prohibiting age and gender discrimination in the labor market should be expedited to protect senior citizens' rights and interests in the workplace. Furthermore, China should pay attention to the role of unemployment insurance and work-related injury insurance in protecting the rights and interests of older workers.

The part of the work-related injury insurance system that is contradictory to basic old-age insurance system should be revised to include older workers into the work-related injury insurance system, and employers should be mandated to pay work-related injury insurance contributions for re-employed post-retirement workers to protect their lawful rights and interests. We should also beef up support for older entrepreneurs to provide concessional loans and tax breaks for them.

Fourth, we should develop more flexible and diversified employment patterns and provide all-round services to boost employment for the elderly. A large proportion of China's young-olds are taking care of their grandchildren, and therefore, more flexible working patterns could better meet their employment demands. More flexible working patterns, such as short-term, part-time and remote work, could be introduced to increase senior citizens' employment opportunities. In addition, job-introduction agencies for seniors should be set up or existing job-introduction agencies should add new branches to serve senior citizens.

We should also vigorously develop an information database for elder human resources by using internet technologies to gather information and match older people's desire for work with available posts. Lifelong education and lifelong vocation ability development should be combined and vocational training should be provided to seniors on a regular basis.

Last, since businesses and social organizations are important entities that provide opportunities for senior citizens' employment or re-employment, only by getting their cooperation can we make the best of their creativity and initiative during the implementation of relevant policies. We could hold national competitions themed on elderly employment promotion to attract businesses and social organizations to participate and provide creative solutions for boosting the employment of seniors. We could also learn from Japan's experience in giving tax breaks, concessional loans or subsidies to businesses that hire workers aged 60 and above, so as to encourage businesses and social organizations to accelerate the building of an age-friendly environment and create a positive work environment and corporate culture.

The author is an associate professor at the School of Sociology and Population Studies and Population Development Studies Center at Renmin University of China. The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily. 

Contact the editor at editor@chinawatch.cn