Every year when winter begins in China, hundreds of thousands of elderly Chinese in the country’s cold northern region migrate south in search of warmer climates. Now, officials in the capital Beijing are incorporating the practice, known as “migratory bird retirement,” into elderly care.
City officials said last week the city is promoting the creation of “south winter and north summer” senior care services to complement care services at housing and boarding for the elderly.
Elderly “migratory birds” in China
According to experts, “migratory bird” retirees are a matter of special concern in China. Photo: 6tones.
According to data released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, China has an aging society according to United Nations standards, with people aged 60 and over accounting for 19.8% of the total population at the end of 2022. However, Policies that promote aged care are becoming an increasingly important challenge for governments.
Among the elderly, “migratory birds” are People in good health and have a lot of free time.
Luo explained that the vast differences in climate in different regions of the country and the convenience of traveling between provinces have created a need for migratory bird retirement.
Luo’s team publishes two reports a year ranking Chinese cities for their suitability for migratory bird retirement. In 2023, Liupanshui city in southwestern Guizhou province ranked as the best city to retire to in summer and Sanya in the southernmost province of Hainan topped the list for winter.
With average winter temperatures above 20 degrees Celsius, Hainan has attracted “migratory birds” from northern China for many years. In 2022, Sanya reported a population of about 0.73 million people with hukou, while nearly 1.07 million people were there for just over half the year.
In their announcement, Beijing officials identified Hainan as a winter destination where the elderly will be encouraged to travel, without providing further details on specific mechanisms.
“Warm in the winter and cool in the summer are the basics. But older migrants have to spend long periods of time in the “habitat” rather than two or three days, so many factors must be considered. be taken into account,” Luo said.
In addition to temperature and air quality, Luo’s team also assessed the socioeconomic situation of different cities, including health care, traffic and cost of living.
For example, one of the important criteria is the number of doctors and hospital beds per 1,000 people that a city has. However, Luo points out that out-of-town seniors may have difficulty repaying medical expenses when seeking treatment.
According to domestic reports, in Hainan, the influx of elderly people has pushed up the domestic cost of living and created pressure on local hospitals. But such problems may be limited to the most popular destinations, according to Luo, as less popular cities would enjoy more economic benefits from increased tourism.
The bigger problem for these cities is the impact of the seasonality of these visits, as new infrastructure built to serve elderly migrants may not be available during low months. point.
“We also call it ‘tidal retirement’, where there’s an influx of people at high tide and then they all disappear at low tide. The unevenness of visitors at different times year requires localities to find suitable business models,” Mr. Luo said.
Retirement migration is not limited to China. Florida in the US attracts tens of thousands of seniors from other states each year due to its warm climate and lack of income tax.
In Europe, many retirees from cold Nordic countries migrate seasonally to warmer southern regions of the continent during the winter months.
