By Michelle Leung (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-10-29 11:05

GUANGZHOU: Raising children to provide for one's elderly days. That was the way Chinese people used to deal with ageing problems - the elderly were supposed to be looked after by their children.

However, as many now have only one child, a growing number of old people in Guangdong Province choose to live alone on pension and social security.

Twelve percent old people, aged more than 60, in urban Guangdong said they were willing to live in the elderly homes instead of with their children, according to a survey by Guangdong Elderly People's Association. The figure was 4 percentages higher than two years ago.

"Living with children is out of date," said Wang Jianjun, 62, who has a 35-year-old daughter. "It's a trend for the elderly to live alone."

Wang and his wife both retired from a State-owned trading company and together have a monthly pension of 5,000 yuan.

Financially independent, the couple said they would live in the elderly home after they cannot properly take care of themselves.

Calling his family a typical "empty nest", Wang however said he enjoyed this way of living. "Children have their own world. You cannot forever rely on them."

With more people resorting to a life pattern like Wang's, experts said the government has to allocate more resources to take care of the growing number of senior citizens.

For example, elderly homes in Guangdong can only accommodate 80,000 people, while hundreds of thousands are applying for the services.

Guangdong now has an elderly population of more than 9 million and the number will hit 10.63 million in 2010 and 14.87 million in 2020, the provincial labor bureau predicted.

To tackle the ageing population, it said, the government has set up a social security system that comprises of pension, medical care and minimum living subsidy to benefit the elderly in urban areas. The system will be gradually extended to rural areas, too, the bureau said.