China faces a much more acute problem. Not only has its one-child policy hastened the gray tide, the large and creaking state sector can no longer meet its welfare obligations. Benefits under the old iron-ricebowl system ranged from housing to medical care. But nominal pension deductions, which were often used to hide red ink, have long vanished. Now a third of state enterprises fail to make pension payments.
Retirees sometimes wait for years to be reimbursed for medical expenses.
Facilities are poor and hardly anyone is protected by any form of social security. Much the same applies to India's seniors, who are also mostly rural folk working in the informal economy. The peasants' insurance remains their children. As a result, traditional systems of helping the aged are coming apart. So are traditional values.