Aging & Society: Eighth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

China’s older population has a long history of working until advanced ages. Despite widespread old-age work, China also maintains relatively young statutory retirement ages, ranging from 45 to 60 years old, which differ based on gender, individual health status, job occupations and sectors. Within the informal economy and particularly in rural areas, formal retirement is less common and changes to work routines are more likely affected by deteriorating health and changes in family situations. The goal of this paper is to understand what drives the decisions of the near elderly and elderly to work, and how work patterns differ as ageing advances across genders and between rural and urban localities. We examine work in a broad sense, including both formal and informal employment under the broad categories of own agricultural work, wage work and earnings from the household’s family-run business. We illustrate the working patterns of the near old and older to develop a profile of the characteristics of those that work and those that do not. We also examine the determinants of work and use our findings to suggest evolving strategies the near elderly and elderly use to support themselves as they age. Specifically, we examine how factors such as age, health status, pension status, income, and household demographics affect decisions of the near old and older regarding whether and how much to work. The primary data used in this work is drawn from the 2015 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey (CHARLS), released in mid-2017.