China’s elderly dependency ratio surpassed its child dependency ratio for the first time in 2025, according to the China Statistical Yearbook 2026 compiled by the National Bureau of Statistics. The country had 212.76 million people aged 0-14, or 15.1 percent of the population, and 223.65 million aged 65 and above, or 15.9 percent. The overall dependency ratio stood at 45.1 percent, with the child ratio at 22 percent and the elderly ratio at 23.1 percent.
The elderly ratio has climbed steadily, from 15 percent in 2016 to 20.8 percent in 2021 and 22.8 percent in 2024, when the child ratio was 23 percent.
Falling birth rates and population aging are reshaping many sectors, particularly education. Facing enrollment shortages, some kindergartens are experimenting with combined child and elderly care, and many have been converted into nursing homes. In July, a project to convert the idle campus of a public kindergarten in Changzhou into an elderly care facility was signed, the city’s first such case. Similar conversions have occurred in Jinan and in Jinhua, Zhejiang, where a 25-year-old kindergarten became a community nursing home in 2023.
Teacher-training colleges are also shifting focus. In 2025, Guangzhou Preschool Teachers College added majors in smart health and elderly care services to help fill a shortage of qualified workers.
Urbanization has further left many rural primary and secondary schools empty, and a significant share of these have been turned into nursing homes, elderly care centers and senior canteens. Hebei Province recently issued a plan covering the management and reuse of idle school buildings.
In April, media reported that senior universities and elderly care institutions were recruiting teachers in fields from singing and calligraphy to AI applications, video production and drone operation. A report by the platform Xingqu Dao found that hobby-related spending has become a leading consumer category for older people, who are willing to pay for belonging, for feeling needed and for having someone waiting for them, giving rise to what it calls a “belonging economy.”
Source: Yicai, October 25, 2026
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