8 - Social Security Reforms

Summary

Chapter 8 is concerned with social security. It discusses the evolution of social security systems for different groups of citizens such as urban workers, government employees, rural residents, and urban non-working residents. It explores existing problems in the social security system, such as unequal social security benefits between urban and rural senior citizens, the decentralized social security management system, low returns in individual accounts, and the growing debt in the social pooling account. Challenges such as population aging are also explored in this chapter, and reform options are discussed, such as reducing social security debt, postponing the retirement age for urban workers, increasing benefits to retired farmers, increasing the size of the individual account of young farmers, and establishing a nationwide social security system.