Quality of Life of Government and Enterprise Employees in Nanning City under the New Pension Scheme of the People’s Republic of China

Abstract

China has the largest population in the world, with over 1,439 million in 2020. The population average growth rate is 5.63‰ during 2000-2016. China has become aging country, the population of the elderly (60 or older) in China is about 128 million, or one in every 10 people. It is estimated that China could have up to 400 million people over 60 years of age by the year 2050. With the rapid development of China's socialist market economy, the gap government department/institutions and enterprises become more and more obviously, which strongly affected the social fairness and justice, social contradictions continue to intensify. This system has played a significant role in protection the lives of retirees and stabling cadres. This paper is part of the research on "the new pension scheme and its impacts on the quality of life: a comparative analysis of government and enterprise employees in Nanning City, the People’s Republic of China." The research objectives include to study the existing social security system and its new pension scheme for government and enterprise employees, and to inquire the suggestions for improving the new pension scheme for a better quality of life of government and enterprise employees. The paper focuses on the in-depth interviews with three policy directors from the Department of Human Resources and Social Security of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and two people from different sub-bureaus, as well as three directors of the salary sector from different enterprises in Nanning city, including six case studies. The findings show that China's new pension system provides the most comprehensive coverage to Chinese retirees in Nanning. But in some dimensions, such as health, all the retirees are concerned about their health. Both retired from government and business had few social activities and little support from their families in terms of social relationships. All cases believe that they still have lots of control over the important things in life. Sometimes their pension restricts their life or hobby. In terms of financial situation, government retirees are more satisfied than private enterprise retirees.