Farmers become migrant workers to boost pensions

Li Huabing left his village in Chongqing for Guangdong province after Spring Festival because he has decided to work for two more years to save money for his old age.

Li, a 63-year-old farmer from Yongle village in Kaixian county, Chongqing, was among the first group of farmers who went to coastal regions to earn a living in the 1980s.

Today, Li can earn 3,000 yuan ($480) a month at a factory in Guangdong. He leaves his wife at home to work a 4,600-square-meter farm.

The farm can bring in 10,000 yuan profit annually, he said.

As another source of income, both Li and his wife can receive a pension of 80 yuan monthly.

"The pension and the money from the farmland will not be enough to support us in our old age," he said.

Li said his children also work at factories in coastal regions, and their earnings can cover only their own family expenses.

"I have saved some money by working outside, but I want to collect more to offset the low pension, and I don't want to pass the burden on to my children," he said.

About 30 other farmers in their 60s or older in the village are also working in other places, Yongle village head Yin Qingsheng said.

Of the approximately 1,300 villagers who leave home to earn money in cities, more than 200 are older than 50, said Yin.

"Many of them face the problem of not having enough money to live a moderately well-off life in old age," he said.

Mountainous Kaixian is home to 1.65 million, and nearly a third of the population migrated to earn money last year, according to Yuan Wanxiang, a local official overseeing labor flow.

About 15 percent of those migrants are older than 50, he said.

Only 16 percent of migrants have joined the endowment insurance program for urban workers, said Yuan.

China has three types of social endowment insurance: basic endowment insurance, for the urban working group; new rural social endowment insurance, for rural residents; and social endowment insurance, for non-working urban residents.

Under the Social Security Law, which took effect in 2011, farmers-turned-workers must participate in the basic endowment insurance for the urban working group.

Yuan said one reason that migrants don't have endowment insurance for workers is many of them work at construction sites. Those jobs pay by day and there is no employment contract between workers and employers.

"Many migrant workers don't contribute to the endowment insurance because they want to have more money on hand," he said.

Workers must pay 8 percent of their wages, and employers pay a sum equal to 20 percent of workers' wages each month to form workers' pension accounts.

Workers have to pay into the accounts for at least 15 years to be able to collect a pension after retirement.

Some labor-intensive enterprises, which absorb a large number of migrant workers, are also reluctant to encourage workers to contribute to endowment insurance because they worry about cost increases, Yuan added.

But 90 percent of the county's former farmers who are now workers have joined the new rural social endowment insurance for rural residents, Yuan said.