Shaanxi Province, China
Ren Dezhi searches his woodpile for a Siberian weasel that a neighbor just spotted rummaging through his chicken coop.
Finding no sign of him, he gathers corn to feed a herd of donkeys, draft animals for his small 2-hectare farm, and prepares to take them to the rugged mountains of northern Shaanxi province.
Mr. Wren's tanned face shows the clean lines of a lifetime of farming on a rugged, windswept loess plateau. If he had grown up in a big city in China, he would have already retired and received the workers' pension. Instead, he must eke out a living growing potatoes, beans, and corn in his scattered fields.
"Nana, this world can't support us for sure," Ren, in his 60s, said with a sigh one recent morning. "If the weather is good, we can harvest. If there is a drought, we have nothing. We depend on heaven for food."
In rural China, millions of village elders like Mr. Ren are in their golden years, proud, but increasingly struggling because they have to. As China ages rapidly, rural areas are aging rapidly, with nearly a quarter of rural residents over the age of 60. But traditional family support is diminishing and social security is lacking. So in Shaanxi and elsewhere, cheerful old men do odd jobs, working in the fields and testing new crops and growing greenhouses to make ends meet.
"The elderly have to rely on themselves until they can no longer," says Yun Kai, a professor of sociology and an expert on fertility policy and China's aging population at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "This is a binding agreement.
Empty wallet and empty house
Mr. Ren and his wife, Lynn Epping, earn less than $1,400 a year selling the corn they grow, as well as a small amount of wild medicinal plants they collect, dry and sell for about 7 cents a pound. They also get a government pension of about $17 a month, which is good for pocket money, but not much else. "This money won't solve any of our problems," Ren said of the guesthouse. "We still have to take care of ourselves."
Anne Scott Tyson/Christian Science Monitor
Although China's standard of living has improved significantly in recent decades and extreme poverty has decreased significantly, many people in rural areas remain poor. According to a World Bank report published last year, "China's path to poverty reduction by 2020 is far from ending with the eradication of absolute poverty." "With the adoption of a more appropriate concept of poverty for a moderately prosperous society, it is estimated that 200 million people will continue to need support to improve their standard of living."
As a group, rural workers fare worse than their urban counterparts. "People living in rural areas receive very little retirement support and live below the poverty line," wrote Yaohui Zhao, a professor of economics at Peking University's National Development School, in a November 2019 report. 2022 by the Chinese Lancet Commission for Healthy Aging. . In 2021, the average per capita income of rural residents was less than 40% of that of urban residents.
Villages like Ren's are mostly home to empty nesters, their children who have moved to the cities in search of work and are now joining the tide of 384 million immigrants. China's rigid hukou population registration system is enforced by the divide between rural and urban areas, with wages being higher in cities. With many empty houses and the rare voices of children, the villages are quiet, but sometimes deserted for the elderly.
"Family fragmentation is definitely a problem" affecting elderly care in rural China, said Stuart Gittel-Basten, professor of social sciences at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi and former director of the Center for the Study of Aging at the University of Science and Technology. Hong Kong. and Technology. "Loneliness... is a big problem and how big it will be in the future is... a big concern."
Deeply rooted in China, Confucian values emphasize filial piety, obliging children, especially sons, to care for aging parents. The offspring often send money home, but as they live shorter and longer, experts say the old traditions of family support are eroding, pushing the elderly into poverty.
Mr. Ren and his wife have two grown children who live in a nearby town, but are also deprived of resources. Her son is drilling for oil, a job Ms. Lin says is unpredictable and dangerous. "They have a hard life," he explains as he sweeps the farmhouse floor with a homemade straw broom. They simply solved the problem of having enough food and clothing."
So, like many Chinese elders, the couple decided to protect themselves so as not to be a burden to the younger generation. Cheerful and intelligent, Mr. Ren opens the wooden door of the donkey shed. "Hey!" The calls of animals, the tapping of sticks on wooden railings. Follow the herd over muddy paths, umbrella under arm, and over the hill.
pension problems
With a quick flick of the shovel and a wave of his hand, Gao Chunlian plucked a bunch of green onions, shook off the dirt, and gave it to her husband in a bag. Whether gardening or working with road workers, Mrs. Gao does the heaviest work these days, and her husband is too weak to farm.
Anne Scott Tyson/Christian Science Monitor
"Even though I'm old, I have to work," says the 60-year-old, brushing a lock of hair. "I even climb trees to pick apples!"
The pay was low, he said, only $15 a day. However, he rarely turns down an opportunity to make money, even if it means moving from city to city.
"I'll go where there's work," he says from his farm in rural Shaanxi.
Further down the road, three old farmers from Miss Gao's village are digging trenches with shovels. A much younger boss sits in his car and watches. "They pay me 120 yuan [$17] a day," said Liu Wenfu, a sweaty and breathless farmer in his 60s.
Like Mrs. Gao and Mr. Liu, more Chinese will have to work in the coming decades.
"For most farmers, there is no such thing as 'retirement,'" Niu Fengrui, former director of the Institute of Urban Development and Environment of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told China Business News in March.
China already has the largest elderly population in the world. About 395 million Chinese will be 65 or older by 2050, making China the oldest of the 20 most populous countries. Meanwhile, the country's birth rate is falling, a trend exacerbated by the one-child policy in place from 1980 to 2016, meaning there will be fewer working-age people to support those millions older adults.
These demographic changes, combined with rising local government debt and the economic slowdown, are putting pressure on China's pension system. China's current average rural pension of about $25 a month "barely covers the basic living expenses of the elderly in rural areas," Yixing Yao, a senior fellow at the Asian Development Bank Institute, wrote in the Chinese state-run daily. Every day in May. This compares to an average monthly pension of $500 for urban workers. But Dr. Yao called the current pension system, which is expected to run out of funds this year, "unsustainable."
In fact, Beijing now plans to force all of China's senior citizens to work longer hours. Earlier this year, state media reported on government plans to gradually raise the retirement age for urban workers to 65, from 60 for men and 55 or 50 for women. "Nobody's going to like it, but at a macro level they understand it's necessary," says Professor Young.
As a result, increasing rural pensions in China today is "impossible," said Alfred Wu, an assistant professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore and an expert on central-local fiscal relations. He added that "the government does not have much money to campaign". "It's competition for resources."
Farmers are resilient
In the villages of northern Shaanxi province, pragmatic, middle-aged farmers try to make a living as long as possible, even if it means extra work and sacrifice at a time when they will be their main gold.
Despite their limited education, they are developing new types of greenhouse crops, apples and apricots, and other businesses in an effort to get ahead.
Farmer Li Shigui, in his 70s, lives in a small brick hut on a sloping terrace next to his greenhouse, which he rents from the government.
Anne Scott Tyson/Christian Science Monitor
Inside the adobe-walled enclosure, rows of beans climb up on bars and melons ripen in nets suspended from a vaulted plastic ceiling. Mr Lee also grows tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and other crops throughout the year.
"We have an irrigation system here," he said, pointing to a pipe that pumps water to his crops. After decades of relying on rain for his crops, Mr Lee has increased his income by about $5,000 a year.
Settled like other greenhouse farmers in spartan one-room flats scattered across the hillside, Mr Lee's initiative has kept him somewhat safe, at least for now.
And when he returns to his shack at night, he proudly says: "I don't receive money from the government."
