BioScience Trends. 2020;14(4):310-313. (DOI: 10.5582/bst.2020.03305)

Promoting social engagement of the elderly to cope with aging of the Chinese population

Wang Y, Zhou C

China is in a stage of rapid aging of its population, and its old-age dependency ratio has been increasing for decades. The acceleration of aging of the population and the increasing old-age dependency ratio will significantly increase the pressure on social security and public services, highlight the need for the effective supply of labor, and weaken the demographic dividend, which will continue to affect social vitality, the power to innovate, and potential economic growth rates. Promoting social engagement has been widely recognized as an effective strategy to address these challenges. Such an approach not only promotes the development of social productivity, but it also alleviates the social burden. Actively promoting the social engagement of the elderly is an important task in gerontology in China. Although the development of social engagement of the elderly is on the rise, the infrastructure and institutions to provide social engagement need to be enhanced. Improving social engagement in China is not just the responsibility of older adults themselves but also of the country and society as a whole. In the future, the entire society will fully understand the special role of older adults and increase their value through social engagement to achieve active and healthy aging in China.

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