Ageing Shanghai needs 35m people by 2050, demographer warns

[NewWorldRecord]

Ageing Shanghai needs 35m people by 2050, demographer warns

City must grow its population by 45pc to ensure a balance between workers and older residents, demographer warns

PUBLISHED : Monday, 13 October, 2014, 5:47am
UPDATED : Monday, 13 October, 2014, 5:47am

Zhuang Pinghui [email protected]

The elderly will make up a third of Shanghai's population by next year, estimates say. Photo: Bloomberg

Shanghai will need a population of 35 million people by 2050 to ensure it has enough workers to support its increasingly greying society, a demographer has warned.

Meeting that target would require the city to boost its current population of 24 million people by 45 per cent.

Shanghai would also need to put more resources into education to ensure it remained competitive with other megacities in the developed world, said Zhou Haiwang, deputy director of population and development studies under the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

About half - 12.3 million - of Shanghai's population has permanent residency. Of that segment, 27 per cent are aged 60 or above, and 5 per cent are 80 years or older, according to the city's statistics bureau.

Speaking at a forum over the weekend, Zhou said the city's elderly population - those aged 60 or above - would climb from 4.6 million next year to 7.7 million in 2030, 9.7 million in 2040 and 11 million after 2045.

To ensure a sustainable mix of older people, children and working residents, the city would need a population of 35 million by 2050, Zhou said.

The authority has projected the grey population will increase by 5.7 per cent annually and account for more than 30 per cent of the population by next year.

Liang Zhongtang, a demographer with the academy, said the city did not need to adjust its birth control policy because the population was being affected at the national level.

"It is no use projecting such figures because it has little impact on the daily lives of residents so long as their needs for health care and education can be met. What we need from the government is less intervention and more market reform in order to lower the threshold to entering the service industry."

Zhou said the latest census showed the education level of Shanghai residents was rising. The enrolment rate for high school is 68 per cent and at the tertiary level 60 per cent - about the same as in European countries such as Germany and Italy but behind the United States and South Korea.

Only 23 per cent of the workforce in 2012 held a college degree, which is lower than the average rate in developed countries.

To remain competitive with megacities in developed countries in 2050, Shanghai would need to dramatically increase the education level of its workforce, including through importing global talent and adjusting population increases, Zhou said.