Household and living arrangement projections at the subnational level: an extended cohort-component approach

The Association Between Family Support and Changes in Self-Rated Health Among Chinese Older Adults: How Living Arrangements Moderate the Association?

OBJECTIVES

The study intends to investigate the association between family support and older adult health as well as the interaction between family support and living arrangements on their health.

DESIGN

Cross-sectional study.

SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS

Samples included in the final analysis (N = 11,430) come from the 2018 Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS).

METHODS

Multiple logistic regression analysis was used to analyze the associations between family supports, multiplicative interaction of family supports and living arrangements, and self-rated health change. Subgroup analysis on disabled older adults was supplemented.

RESULTS

Older adult individuals who received functional support, provided financial support, and had frequent emotional communication with their children in the past year reported better self-rated health. Moreover, having frequent emotional communication with children could bring better self-rated health for the older adults living with spouses and children (ORbetter vs same = 2.765, P < .01) and empty nesters who lived without children (ORbetter vs same = 1.551, P < .05).

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

Our findings imply that functional support and emotional support may play an increasingly important role in the health of Chinese older individuals. The interaction between emotional support and 2 living arrangements mentioned above is relevant to better health of older individuals. We advocate for culturally tailored Age-Friendly Communities augmenting the geriatric health care framework. While bolstering social support for seniors, prioritizing fundamental needs is paramount for those with disabilities.

How Two-Child Policy Affects China's Energy Consumption: The Mediating Role of Lifestyle

Background

Existing literature believed that the birth control policy affects energy consumption through the change in population size, but ignored the changes in people's lifestyle. This may mislead the government's policy-making about population and energy consumption.

Method

This article proposed a Population-Lifestyle-Energy (PLE) model to provide new insights into how birth control policy affects energy consumption if the changes in people's lifestyle are considered. The ProFamy software is used to forecast the changes in demographic characteristics. The methods of regression analysis and Input-Output Analysis are used to predict the impacts of lifestyle changes on energy consumption.

Results

We find that China's two-child policy will result in the total energy consumption increase by 16.2% in 2050, far outpacing the population increase of 9.3% when considering the indirect effect of lifestyle changes. This is significantly different from the optimistic wisdom in the existing literature. We also find the non-linear relationships between fertility rate and energy consumption.

Conclusion

Ignoring lifestyle changes will lead to an underestimation of energy consumption. Contrary to conventional optimistic wisdom, we believe that the two-child policy will make it difficult for China to meet promised energy conservation goals.

Impacts of family household dynamics on residential energy demands in Hebei Province of China

This article presents analyses and projections of the residential energy demands in Hebei Province of China, using the ProFamy extended cohort-component method and user-friendly free software and conventional demographic data as input. The results indicate that the future increase in residential energy demands will be dominated by large increase in small households with 1–2 persons. We found that increase of residential energy demands will be mainly driven by the rapid increase of older adults’ households. Comparisons between residential energy demand projections by household changes and by population changes demonstrate that projections by population changes seriously under-estimate the future residential energy demands. We recommend that China needs to adopt policies to encourage and facilitate older parents and adult children to live together or near-by, and support rural-to-urban family migration. Promoting inter-generation co-residence or living near-by between older parents and young adults would result in a mutually beneficial outcome for both older and younger generations as well as to effectively reduce energy demands. We suggest governments to carefully formulate strategies on efficient residential energy use to cope with the rapid households and population aging, and strengthen data collections/analyses on household residential energy demands for sound policy-making and sustainable development.

Assessment of the Financial Sustainability of China’s New Rural Pension Plan: Does the Demographic Policy Reform Matter?

Rural China is experiencing a rapid aging process caused by low fertility and large-scale rural-to-urban migration, which will place an increasing payment burden on the rural pension plan. To allay the negative impact of the aging transition, China has recently carried out a demographic policy reform, replacing the famous one-child policy with the two-child policy. This paper evaluates the impacts of the demographic policy reform on the financial sustainability of China’s New Rural Pension Plan (NRPP). By applying the cohort component population projection method and building actuarial models, the solvency sustainability of the NRPP between 2019 and 2080 is estimated under six demographic policy scenarios, followed by sensitivity analysis. The simulation results show that under the one-child policy, the current and the accumulated pension fund would run deficits in 2030 and 2042, and then the pension deficits would expand rapidly. The two-child policy would relieve the pension pressure moderately before 2075, but thereafter, the pension deficits would become much worse. Sensitivity analysis of a series of demographics and pension parameters on the financial sustainability of the NRPP are displayed. On average, the long-term pension gap may not be avoided for the NRPP, regardless of raising the contribution rate, delaying the retirement age, or encouraging people to have more children.

Age of Retirement and Human Capital in an Aging China, 2015-2050

As China continues to age rapidly, whether the country should adjust the official retirement age, and if so, when and how, are currently major policy concerns. We examine the impact of postponing the retirement age on the human capital of China in the next four decades. Two critical aspects of human capital—health and education—are incorporated to account for the quality of the work force. Our projections reveal the impact of nine scenarios on the Chinese labor force in the next few decades, highlighting the changes in “the high human capital workforce”—those with good health and education. We show substantial impact with added work force ranging from 28 to 92 million per year depending on which scenarios are implemented. Furthermore, the retained workers are increasingly better educated. The gain in female workers is particularly significant, reaping the benefits of the education expansion since the 1990s.

Implications of changes in households and living arrangements for future home-based care needs and costs for disabled elders in China

OBJECTIVES

To better understand future home-based care needs and costs for disabled elders in China.

METHOD

To further develop and apply the ProFamy extended cohort-component method and the most recent census and survey data.

RESULTS

(a) Chinese disabled elders and the annual growth rate of the percentage of national gross domestic product (GDP) devoted to home-based care costs for disabled elders will increase much more rapidly than the growth of total elderly population; (b) home-based care needs and costs for disabled oldest-old aged 80+ will increase much faster than that for disabled young-old aged 65-79 after 2030; (c) disabled unmarried elders living alone and their home-based care costs increase substantially faster than those disabled unmarried elders living with children; (d) percent of rural disabled oldest-old will be substantially higher than that of rural population after 2030; (e) sensitivity analyses show that possible changes in mortality and elderly disability status are the major direct factors affecting home-based care needs and costs; (f) caregivers resources under the universal two-child policy will be substantially better than that under the rigorous fertility policy unchanged.

DISCUSSION

We discuss policy recommendations concerning pathways to healthy aging with relatively reduced care costs, including reductions of the prevalence of disability, gender equality, the universal two-child policy and resources of caregivers, encouragements of rural-to-urban family migration and elder's residential proximity to their adult children, and remarriages of not-married elders.

Enhancing engagement between the population, environment, and climate research communities: the shared socio-economic pathway process

Demographers have much to contribute to climate change science. This paper describes a new framework being developed by the climate research community that holds potential as an organizing tool for population-climate scholarship, as well as being useful for identifying demographic research gaps within the climate change field. The shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs) represent plausible alternative trends in the evolution of social and natural systems over the twenty-first century at the scale of the world and large regions. The SSPs can help identify population-environment research gaps by illuminating areas of intersection that will shape climate futures but require deeper scientific understanding-the association between urbanization and energy consumption is an example. Also, to vastly enhance the policy relevance of local case studies, the parameters outlined within the SSPs can offer a basic level of harmonization to facilitate generalization. In this way, the SSP framework can increase the relevance and accessibility of population research and, therefore, offer a mechanism through which demographic science can truly offer policy impact.