On The Rural Old-age Security System In China

The twenty-first century is the aging century. China is the developing country with the largest population base and faces more outstanding population aging and old-age security issues, among which the aging issues in the rural area are more serious than that in the cities. However, the rural old-age security has always been the traditional security model with the family carrying the primary responsibility. This model is suitable to the self-sufficient natural economy, but it has increasingly shown the conditionality to the development of social economy after the implementation of reform and opening up with the orientation of market economy. Therefore, accelerating the establishment and improvement of the rural old-age security system shall not only have the practical relevance but also have the important theoretical significance.The paper is composed of the introduction and seven chapters. The introduction outlines the research background and significance, domestic and international research status quo, research method and the innovative points of the paper.Chapter I sorts out and concludes the theories of the establishment and improvement of old-age security system, including welfare economics, western political economics, neo-classical theory, social security theories of Marx and Lenin and the theory of the old, etc. Welfare economics is divided into the old and the new welfare economics:the old welfare economics emphasizes the role of reallocation for improving social welfare, the new welfare economics establishes the evaluation criteria for social economic policies and emphasizes that any social change should be performed to the direction in favor of Pareto Improvement. Western political economics analyzes non-economic factors, especially the role of political factors for the establishment of public (state) pension system but does not propose the systematic policies and opinions. Neo-classic theory is the extension of the new welfare economics in the theory of old-age security issues, mainly including Life-Cycle Hypothesis, Over Lapping Generation Model and theory of market failure, etc. It discusses the necessity for the existence of old-age security policies and the fund raising model of the old-age security. Marx addressed the necessity for the existence of social security from the perspective of social reproduction; Lenin proposed the theory of national insurance and established the theoretical basis for building social security under the condition of the planned economy. Theory of the old elaborates that the development of human society needs the establishment of old-age social security system from the perspective of sociology.ChapterⅡreviews and summarizes all the previous changes of the rural social endowment insurance systems and. This chapter traces the changing process of China’s rural social endowment insurance systems from the historical vertical point of view, analyzes the establishment and development course of the traditional rural endowment insurance system and the reasons for the failures in practice, and also analyzes the pilot and exploration process, characteristics and existing issues of new rural endowment insurance system.As the core and main form of the China’s rural medical security system, rural cooperative medical system plays a certain role in protection of basic medical rights for the old in rural areas. During the past sixty years of development, rural cooperative medical system had gone through many difficulties. This chapter describes the path change of the rural cooperative medical system, development and characteristics of the new rural cooperative medical system, and analyzes the problems existing in the new rural cooperative medical system such as principle of voluntary participation, comprehensive arrangement for serious disease as main concern, not meeting the real medical needs for the old in rural areas, and inadequate institutions, personnel and funds.ChapterⅢanalyzes the changes and influencing factors of the role of the two security ways-family and commercial insurance in the old-age security system. Family, as the cell of the society, deeply reflects every significant change of social productivity and production relations. China’s rural families currently still play the important function of the old-age security after experiencing the evolution of thousands of years but also face many issues, mainly showing at the increasingly outstanding imbalance between the supply and demand, the gradual weakening of land protection functions, shortage of service supply for the old, the falling status of the old in the families, the impacted concept and obligations of supporting the old and soon.Rural commercial insurance is lagging and can not effectively play the role in the rural old-age security system mainly due to the unclear positioning of the commercial insurance in the rural old-age security system, insufficient understanding of the importance of insurance company itself to the rural commercial endowment insurance market, low awareness degree of most farmers to the insurance and inadequate supervision strength to rural commercial endowment insurance. Therefore, it is necessary to re-understand the position and the importance of commercial insurance in the rural old-age security system and take effective measure to fully play its role in the old-age security.ChapterⅣis the analysis of the development and its limitations of rural old-age assistance system. Rural five guarantees supporting system was established for the special group of the old of five guarantees as early as the 1950s in China, it played a significant role in addressing the old-aged care issues of the old of five guarantees, and experienced the historical changes from traditional assistance model of farmer’s collective mutual aid to the modern social security model mainly relying on the national financial support with collective security, land security and social aid as the supplement. However, other rural old-age assistance experienced the changes from temporary assistance; regular quantitative assistance to the rural minimum livelihood security system, the institutional arrangement laid a stable foundation for the security of old-aged care for the rural aged suffering from poverty. At present, the rural minimum livelihood security system exist the issues of legal guarantee shortage, insufficient capital investment, low security standards, less scientific identification procedure of the securing objects and shortage of institutions and personnel, etc.; the issues of the difficulties in achieving that all the eligible residents are by and large provided for through the rural five guarantees supporting system, in securing according to the standards and in the full implementation of the content of the five guarantees; rural medical assistance system, as the last protective barrier for the old-age medical security system, exist the issues of difficulty in fund raising, low level of medical assistance and difficulty in management and coordination among sectors, all of which have made the exertion of rural old-age assistance system functions exist certain limitations.Chapter V firstly conducts in-depth analysis of the history and experience of establishing rural old-age security system of social insurance type, welfare state type and social assistance type represented by Germany, Canada and Brazil respectively, and summarizes the six revelations of establishing and improving China’s rural old-age security system, adhering to the balanced development of the urban and rural areas and expanding the coverage of old-age security, fully playing the leading role of the government, establishing the rural old-age security model with multiple pillars, introducing the laws and regulations of rural old-age security system, bringing the building of rural old-age security system into the "Three-Agricultures" development planning, exploring and constructing the rural old-age security system with the Chinese characteristics based on it.Chapter VI proposes the basic framework of China’s rural old-age security system. The ultimate goal of constructing the rural old-age security system is the equality, harmony and sustainable development. The establishment and improvement of China’s rural old-age security system should comply with the principles of government domination, fair priority and multi-levels of system structures according to the features of rural old-age security system and products based on drawing foreign and historical experience. The basic framework includes the institutional structure and the arrangements. Basic institutional structure sticks to taking the family old-age security as the main body, the social old-age assistance as the basis, the social endowment insurance as the domination and the old-age security forms of personal savings and neighborhood mutual aid as the supplement, vigorously develop commercial endowment insurance and secure the basic living needs of the rural old citizens; the unified rural endowment insurance system management organizations should be firstly established on the institutional arrangements to change the situation of barriers between higher and lower levels; and secondly optimize the settings and building of organizational regulations of the rural endowment insurance management organizations combining with the state’s administrative system reform. ChapterⅦproposes the recommendations for improving China’s rural old-age security system, mainly including the following:For the new rural social endowment insurance system model, it should stick to the principles of favoring economic growth, increasing personal real disposable income and social stability on the fund raising; funds of social planning part should adhere to the management by the government and implement the two-line management of financial income and expense on the fund management, the part of personal accumulation should implement the market-oriented management; and continue to adhere to the form of " fees " rather than the form of " changing fees to tax " on the payment method.The measures to accelerate the development of rural commercial endowment insurance are mainly to implement loose fiscal and tax policies, improve the insurance regulatory system adapting to the characteristics of China’s rural areas, enhance the cultivation of farmer’s risk and insurance awareness and increase the effective supply for the rural endowment insurance, etc.Improvement of the rural old-age assistance system is mainly to continue sticking to taking the main responsibility for the old-age social assistance by the government, establish effective linked rural social assistance system and the general preferential old-age allowance system, perfect the rural minimum livelihood security system and improve "Five Guarantees" supporting system, etc.For the establishment of a perfect rural old-age medical security system, we should start mainly from strengthening effective linkage between multi-level rural old-age security, increase capital investment in rural medial security, and perfect the new rural cooperative medical system.Meanwhile, it should pay attention to the exertion of the role of informal old-age security, strengthen the basic role of family old-age security, open up the old-age security forms of multiple channels.