Population Aging and Pension Reforms in China

Boele Bonthuis, Yongquan Cao and Christoph Freudenberg

No 2026/027, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: China is experiencing rapid population aging and a declining workforce, posing significant economic and fiscal challenges, especially to the pension system. This paper examines the evolution of China’s pension system, assesses its gaps relative to international peers, and evaluates the macro-fiscal implications of population aging and various pension reforms. Using a calibrated overlapping generations model that explicitly incorporates the rural–urban disparities, we project that population aging alone can slow annual GDP growth by about 2 percentage points between 2024 and 2050, while pension spending can rise by nearly 10 percentage points of GDP. The 2024 retirement age reform eases some of the long-term growth and fiscal sustainability pressures, raising GDP growth by 0.2 percentage points annually and reducing pension spending from 15.3 percent to 11.9 percent of GDP by 2050. We also use the model to examine a set of policy-relevant reforms—doubling Residents Pension Scheme benefits which are currently inadequate, linking benefits to life expectancy, further increasing the retirement age, and promoting urbanization—and find significant effects on fiscal and macroeconomic outcomes.

Keywords: Population Aging; Pension System; Urbanization; China; Fiscal Policy; IMF working papers; retirement age reform; pension reforms in China; residents pension scheme benefit; Pensions; Pension spending; Aging; Retirement; Asia and Pacific (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34
Date: 2026-02-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge
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