Working Until Dropping: Employment Behavior of the Elderly in Rural China

Lihua Pang, Alan de Brauw and Scott Rozelle ()
Additional contact information
Scott Rozelle: Williams College

No 2004-14, Department of Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics, Williams College

Abstract: In rural areas of many developing countries, including China, people do not have the chance to retire, but rather have to continue working as they age. In this paper, we have two specific objectives. First, we will illustrate the work and retirement patterns of the elderly, and develop a profile of the characteristics of the elderly that work and those that do not. We will describe the work contours both in the formal and informal sectors. Second, we will examine the determinants of work and retirement and attempt to surmise from these the strategies that the elderly use to support themselves when they are old. One finding of interest is that we find evidence of behavior among the elderly that in many cases they are willing to sacrifice their own current consumption and asset accumulation to help make their children more productive so the children will be able to better care for their parents when they are older.

Keywords: China; elderly; employment; retirement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J14 J26 O13 Q12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-04
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://web.williams.edu/Economics/wp/debrauwrozelle_cj_elderly.pdf
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to web.williams.edu:443 (SSL connect attempt failed error:0A000152:SSL routines::unsafe legacy renegotiation disabled)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wil:wileco:2004-14

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Department of Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics, Williams College Williamstown, MA 01267. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Greg Phelan ().