Can China Age Healthily?
Published in: The Lancet, v. 384, no. 9945, Comment, Aug. 30, 2014, p. 723-724
Posted on RAND.org on March 23, 2016
China has more older people (65 years and older) than any other country. According to the 2010 census, the number of people aged 65 years and older was 119 million, 8·9% of the population. Moreover, China's population is one of the fastest ageing in the world. Although developed countries took around half a century to double the number of people aged 65 years and older (from 7% to 14%), China will do so in half that time. By 2050, China's ageing population will match that of many of today's developed countries--and exceed that of countries such as Denmark, New Zealand, Australia, and the USA.
This report is part of the RAND Corporation External publication series. Many RAND studies are published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, as chapters in commercial books, or as documents published by other organizations.
The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.