Future elderly welfare recipients in Hong Kong

Abstract

In the next three decades Hong Kong will face a rapidly aging population. It was estimated the number of older adults aged 60 or above In Hong Kong will be increased from 1 million in 2001 to approximately 1.6 million by 2015. In 2001 there were 1.2 million soon-to-be-old adults aged between 45 and 59. In a survey of 1867 soon-to-be old adults in 2000 we found that 21.5% of them planned to rely on welfare as their first or second methods to maintain their living after retirement. Based on this result we estimated that in the coming 15 years the percentage of welfare recipients in the aged population might increase 60% whereas the absolute number of elderly welfare recipients would be 2.5 times of the current ones. Further analysts indicated that compared with other soon-to-be old adults those who selected welfare as their first and second choice to secure retirement income were more likely to be unemployed to receive welfare to be lacked of family financial support (especially from adult children) to have lower income and financial asset and not to have any retirement protection provided by their current employers. (authors)