China's Elderly Human Resources Development Under The Background Of An Aging Population

The representatives of Malta raised an issue that the world is facing the problemof aging at the 24th United Nations General Assembly convened in 1969. And theyhoped that every governments pay attention to the problems caused by it and thespecial needs of elders. This proposal was immediately attracted the attention of thenational delegates. Now, population aging has been not only a major social problem ofthe world, but also strategic issues involved with national economic, socialdevelopment and population policy.Although China's population aging problem appeared relatively late, there was avery rapid process because of the implementation of family planning policy. In 2000,people aged over 60 reached 10.46% of the total Chinese population that means weentered the aging society exactly. A series deeply impacts of economic and social willcome out with population aging. From a macro perspective, population aging will leadto a reduction of labor resources and labor force participation rate, firstly. Secondly, itwill also cause a reduction of consumer demand and a drop down of saving rate.Finally, it will aggravate the burden of social care and increase the medical insuranceexpenses. From the micro perspective, population aging refers to a series of problemssuch as retirement of old people, pension plans, savings and consumption, medicaltreatment, health treatment and so on. On one hand, we should recognize thatpopulation aging is the inevitable result of demographic transition which means asocial progress. On the other hand, we should know this is a severe challenge becauseChina is a developing country that means we entered the aging society at a low level ofnational income.Academics, politicians had made a lot of solution of population aging problemssuch as extending the retirement age, encouraging fertility, introduction of foreignyoung workers. The experience of European has shown that immigration policy canalleviate the situation of aging to some extent but not root causes. And immigrationpolicy may cause other problems such as unemployment of indigenous people, ethnic conflicts, increasing in crime. On the other hand, encouraging fertility does not workcontributes to fertility rate is hard to change in a low fertility desire. Therefore, WorldHealth Organization raised a recommendation called active aging which means elderlyis no longer as a burden to society but an important part of social development.Theory of sustainable development says that we must ensure the sum of all theresources in the development process be not reduced in order to maintain socialeconomic growth steadily. When natural resource is depleting, we should takemeasures. On one hand, we should look for alternative resources actively. On otherhand, reducing consumption of natural resources by new technologies should be taken.And then population aging led to the reduction of human resources, we should improvethe quality of human resources and the utilization of human resources. Althoughelderly were no longer in the first line of production, their knowledge, skill andexperiences could be utilized.In 2002, former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said"We shouldrecognize that today old people can make a greater contribution than before contributeto better education and good health. So their precious ability and experiences could befully used by participating society. And people who can and need work should getopportunities to work."in the Second World Assembly on Ageing, the openingceremony.The development of elderly resources is significant for China maintainsustainable economic and social development. This paper studied the development ofelderly resources in population aging, and analyzed the reasons of the elderly humanresources development from various angles. Finally, I proposed the solution of thecurrent problems of the development of resources of the elderly.There are 7 chapters in this paper.Chapter 1 is the introduction. It introduced the background and significance of thetopics and introduced the programmatic document on the participation of elderly andreach in China.Chapter 2 is the theoretical part of the article. It introduced the concepts andreasons of population aging. Then this chapter introduced the demographic transitiontheory and described the practical feasibility of the resources of the elderly. Finally, itdemonstrated the relationship between population aging and the elderly humanresources development from the perspective of sustainable development. Chapter 3 is the data portion of the article. It described the situation of old laborresources in China with data. Firstly, it introduced the situation, characteristic andtrend of population aging in China. Secondly, it described the situation of Chineseelderly human resources. Finally, this chapter analyzed the situation of Chinese elderlyhuman capital by using the data of the education level and state of health of old people.Chapter 4 raised the problems. It revealed the problems of China's old laborresources development by mount of data of these years. Resource development hasgradually increased in elderly these years overall, but there were still some problemssuch as low level, backward of retirement system and people's awareness and pooraccess to the re-employment of elderly.Chapter 5 is the focus of this article. It, from micro to macro, from thespecification to the empirical, analyzed the causes and influencing factors of thedevelopment resources of old persons. In micro prospect, it analyzed the motivation ofparticipation of elderly. In macro prospect, it cited kinds of social needs of the elderly.In empirical prospect, this chapter made correlation analysis of the factors that affectolder people at work. It showed that the action of re-employment of elderly still in alow level of needs.Chapter 6 introduced the experiences of elderly human resources development inGermany, Japan and Singapore. The all-round action plan of Germany, the assistant ofJapanese civil society organizations and the strong policy of the Government ofSingapore are all able to learn by China.Chapter 7 is suggestions part of the article. This paper believed that the hinder ofthe resource development in the elderly root from the prejudices of people, so it mustbe removed. A system is insurance of the development of the old labor resource.Finally, we need the support of government policies that is the only way to ensure thedevelopment of elderly resources.