Comparing Poverty Among Older People in Urban China Internationally

Abstract

The decline in China's overall poverty rate in recent decades reflects the success of the economic reforms, but it is also important to examine the structure of poverty. Its incidence among older people can highlight where and how pension schemes and other mechanisms succeed in providing income adequacy in old age. This article compares poverty rates among the aged living by themselves (or with their spouse) in urban China with those existing in a range of other, mainly richer industrial countries. It uses data from a national survey of the aged in China conducted in 2000 and estimates derived from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), an international project that has set the standards for comparative research on economic well-being, poverty and inequality. The results provide a robust assessment of how well China has performed in reducing poverty among older people. Using poverty lines set at one-half of median and mean income, the analysis indicates that while relative poverty among older people in urban China exceeds that in other countries, the gap varies with living arrangements, where the poverty line is set and how older people are defined, but is far smaller than the underlying differences in per capita income.