The Quality of Life of the Retirees Under the New Social Security System : A Comparative Analysis of Government and Enterprise Retired Employees in Nanning City, the People's Republic of China.

Abstract

The research objectives are three-fold: firstly, to study the existing social security and its new pension scheme for government and enterprise employees; secondly to study the relationship of variables of the retirees’ personal qualifications on the quality of life between the government and enterprise employees; and thirdly to inquire into the suggestions for improving the new pension scheme for a better quality of life for government and enterprise employees. Mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative) are employed to collect the data. The 400 government and enterprise employees in Nanning city were the sample of the quantitative research. For the qualitative research, 3 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 3 directors of the salary sector from different enterprises in Nanning city, were interviewed. Six case studies were conducted. The result of research reveals that there is no difference in the quality of life overall between government-retried employees and enterprise-retried employees. However, there are differences in some respects, i.e. financial situation, spiritual achievement, freedom and life control, social relationships, responsibility for family, living in good surroundings.