5 lakh elderly people go missing in China every year: Survey

Senior citizens will constitute 17% of the country's population with their numbers increasing to 240 million by 2020

Around five lakh elderly people, among whom a majority are women, go missing every year in China due to inadequate medicare and migration of their children to cities, according to a survey released on October 9.

The joint survey released by the Zhongmin Social Assistance Institute and a leading news platform Toutiao said, as many as 1,370 senior citizens go missing every day with the average age of the missing individual being 76.

Women account for 58 per cent of the total, stated the report.

The survey also noted that among the missing, a majority of people suffer from mental illness. While 72 percent of them suffer from some form of memory impairment, 25 percent individuals were diagnosed with dementia, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
 
According to the survey, many cases are related to poverty and inadequate care provided by family members as they migrate to larger cities in search of higher wages.

The survey calls for a national network to be set up to record and find missing people, and recommends that aid centres arrange specialists to look for them.

It also suggests that local governments in areas, where the outlfow of population is large, must cooperate with social groups to assess the living conditions of seniors citizens left at home, and explore effective methods to prevent such citizens from going missing.

China has been facing major demographic crisis due to its three-decade-old one child policy that has left the country to face challenges involved with an ageing population.

According to a senior Chinese official,  China will have 240 million people, aged 60 or above, by 2020. At present, it has 220 million within the same age bracket. The changing democgraphics is likely to put a heavy strain on the country's health care system, besides elading to a steady reduction in labour force.

According to Liu Qian, deputy head of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, senior citizens will make up 17 percent of China's population by 2020.

Chinese capital is already feeling the heat with number of pensioners climbing up 22 milion, which is 23.4 percent of of its tottal population.

In order to address the long-term impact of the population, the Chinese government had earlier this year scrapped the one child policy and permitted people to have a second child.