Original title: Times Commentary: Can “Inclusive Pensions” Crack Old-age Anxiety?
China’s pension demand is a “jujube core type” structure. The elderly group in the middle of the jujube core has the largest number and the most embarrassing situation. The fundamental reason is that the effective supply of inclusive elderly care services for ordinary elderly groups is insufficient. To promote the development of inclusive elderly care, on the one hand, we must emphasize the construction of inclusive service capabilities, and on the other hand, we must actively mobilize local governments and enterprises to play their roles.
The Chinese-style pension problem brought about by the aging population is a topic of high social concern. In particular, the aging of the population is accompanied by the process of industrialization, urbanization, and modernization, and the urban-rural gap, regional gap and income gap are superimposed, making the current pension problem particularly complex and severe.
The “14th Five-Year Plan for National Aging Development and Elderly Care Service System Plan” released not long ago clearly stated that during the “14th Five-Year Plan” period, the whole society should actively respond to the initial formation of the population aging pattern, but this does not seem to be fundamentally dispelled. People’s anxiety about the future pension problem, after all, there are still many uncertain factors from the written planning to the actual implementation. Overall, it is not an easy task to solve the problem of “unable to buy, unaffordable, difficult to buy, and uneasy to buy” elderly care services in the short term.
Compared with other countries, China’s population aging problem has a large base and rapid development, and the characteristics of “getting old before getting rich” and “aging before getting ready” make the contradiction between supply and demand of elderly care services in China more prominent. Some data show that developed countries enter the aging stage when per capita GDP reaches US$5,000 to US$10,000, while my country has already entered the stage when per capita GDP is only US$1,000. The supply of facilities cannot meet the needs of the aging population.
An analysis of China’s pension needs shows that it is a “jujube-type” structure, with the wealthy and difficult groups at the two ends: the high-end pension needs of the wealthy can be solved through market-based methods; Demand can be covered by the government’s basic public services. It is precisely the elderly group in the middle of the jujube core that has the largest number and the most embarrassing situation.
The fundamental reason for the above situation is still the lack of effective supply of elderly care services, especially the inclusive elderly care services for ordinary elderly groups, the supply gap is even greater. In response to this, the relevant departments launched the “Special Action for Urban Enterprises Linking Inclusive Pensions” as early as the beginning of 2019. In that year, 1.4 billion yuan of funds in the central budget were issued, and 70,000 new pension beds were added. Judging from the figures, the strength is not too big, but it is obviously not enough to spread it evenly to the “denominator” of the hundreds of millions of elderly people.
It is too early to draw conclusions on whether inclusive pension can truly solve the pension anxiety of the Chinese people, but from the perspective of development direction, decision-makers attach great importance to it, and the market also responds. The “Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Strengthening Aging Work in the New Era” issued in November 2021 clearly pointed out that “vigorously develop inclusive elderly care services and promote balanced allocation of resources”; The “System Planning” emphasizes that “we must build a solid old-age care service network and expand the coverage of inclusive old-age care services”, which have laid a solid foundation for the promotion of inclusive old-age care.
Compared with basic old-age care and fully market-oriented high-end old-age care, inclusive old-age care places more emphasis on building an old-age care service system oriented to the general public, mainly relying on market supply and guided by policies. It satisfies the pension needs of ordinary elderly groups to the greatest extent by reasonably guiding the price of pension services. At the same time, another major focus of inclusive elderly care is the support and cultivation of community elderly care service institutions. For example, extending services to families by operating family care beds; another example, promoting the complementary functions of regional elderly care service centers and community institutions at the township and street level, and jointly building a “quarter-an-hour” home-based elderly care service circle, etc.
It should be seen that it is difficult to solve the funding gap of inclusive elderly care only by relying on public finance to sing a “one-man show”. Affected by factors such as long return period and low return rate, inclusive pension projects are often not favored by industrial capital, and the domestic inclusive pension financial market has just started, and a mature business model has not yet been formed. In this context, to promote the development of inclusive elderly care, on the one hand, we must emphasize the construction of inclusive service capabilities, and on the other hand, we must actively mobilize local governments and enterprises, especially state-owned enterprises to play their role, and strive to achieve a balance between high-quality services and reasonable prices. Find the greatest common divisor. (Gu Yang)