China's explicit social security debt: How large?

Abstract

Local governments in China have used a large amount of funds from individual accounts to finance deficits in the pay-as-you-go social pooling account, resulting in explicit social security debt. It is undoubtedly useful to know how large the debt is and how it will evolve in the future. This paper assesses the debt in China's social security individual accounts. It shows detailed calculations of the revenue, the anticipated funds, expenditures, and the debt in the individual accounts since their inception in 1997. The social security debt for China reached 1.59% of the GDP in 2015. The paper also assesses the historical social security debt in the individual accounts for each province. It shows that social security debt is unevenly spread, reaching more than 10% in Heilongjiang province and being negative in Guangdong province in 2015. The determinants for high debt in the individual accounts are examined based on the data from thirty-one Chinese provinces from 1997 to 2015. The paper also forecasts social security debt in the future and finds that the social security debt will reach over 8% of GDP in 2025 if the current system remains unchanged. Various ways to reduce the social security debt are also explored.