见闻特约记者李勤习：中国有一种传统思想就是“以房养老”。您如何看待将房产用于医疗保健？
In China we have an old traditional thinking, we always want to keep our house because we want to raise ourselves by our house. How do you think to use the house to provide for healthcare?
罗奇：我认为这是传统与现代社会老年人医疗保健要求之间的冲突。随着年龄的增长，你必须去改变生活方式。现在有一种新的权衡取舍在挑战历史传统，想要找到合适的解决方案并非易事。这又回到我刚才所提到的养老支持的话题上来，它需要政府从社会保障和养老金方面获得更多资金，还需要医疗保健制度的福利支撑。如果现在政府将注意力从社保缴纳的数量转移到社会福利的质量上，这将有助于解决这个重要问题。
I think it is conflict between the traditions and requirements of healthcare for elderly in a modern system. Nobody wants to leave their home, but aging occurs and it demands lifestyle changes as you get older. There are the new type of trade-offs challenge these historical traditions and the answer is not an easy one. It just goes back to the point I made earlier that the support for elderly, it needs to greater funding by the government both from the point of social security and pension but also the benefits that is paid out by the healthcare system. If the government were to shift its focus now from the quantity of enrollment to the quality of the benefits, that would be helpful to address the very important question you have raised.
在不同的体制下，我们面临的问题都是相同的。日本可以为中国提供应对快速老龄化的实践经验，它现在是世界上人口老龄化最严重的国家，老年抚养比达到65%，即老年人口与劳动年龄人口的比例为0.65。中国与日本的发展方向也是一致的，只是日本较中国领先了20年。因此，日本在应对老龄化问题方面可以学习借鉴。
We are all dealing with the same issues with different systems. The laboratory for dealing with rapidly aging society is Japan. Japan has the oldest population in the world right now. If you look at the demographic profile of old age dependency ratio, the ratio of65% of the older to the working age population.Japan looks like China except it’s about 20 years ahead. China is going the same direction as Japan. So japan is ahead of focusing a lot on addressing its elderly issues.
我在耶鲁开设的一门课上，曾带着学生们做了详尽的比较，不仅仅是从人口统计学的角度来看，还包括货币和债务等其他特征视角。但从人口统计学的角度来看，如果中国再不完善新生人口和退休年龄政策，那么20年后中国可能会重蹈日本覆辙。此外我还查阅了联合国的人口统计数据。鉴于近年来计划生育政策发生了变化，如果一个家庭平均每年生育一个或多个孩子，那么还有可能扭转局势。如果提高退休年龄，比如从65岁延迟到70岁，也有助于提高中国公民的生活质量，避免走上日本老路。
In the class I teach in Yale, I took students through this comparison in great detail. I do this not just from the standpoint of demographics but other characteristics such as currency and debt. But from the standpoint of demographics, the characteristics in Japan are very similar to where China is headed, not today, but 20 years from now, if China does nothing in terms of addressing its child birth and retirement age characteristics. It will look like Japan. So I run some stimulations through the demographical data of UN. If you expand the family size by literally on average half a child or more per year, which seems very feasible to me given a shift occurred in the family planning the one child policy in recent years. If you raise the retirement age, it’s very important from say 65 to 70, which is very consistent with the improved lifestyles or survival rate of Chinese citizens. That could make real differences in avoiding the Japanese’s type of outcome for China.
