Just over a third of Taiwanese feel they will enjoy a better retirement than their parents, according to the results of a survey released yesterday, showing less optimism than the poll’s respondents across Asia and the world.
The 35 percent of Taiwanese respondents who anticipated better retirements than the previous generation was lower than the 45 percent averaged worldwide and more than 50 percent averaged for Asia, the HSBC Insurance survey found.
The survey, conducted by the insurer in December last year, polled 17,000 employed respondents aged 30 to 60 in 17 countries or regions, including Taiwan, the US, France, Canada, China, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and the UK.
ASIAN OPTIMISM
According to the survey, respondents in Asia appeared more optimistic about their retirement than respondents in other regions of the world, driven mainly by 78 percent of the respondents in India and 75 percent in China saying that their lives in retirement would be a step up from the older generation.
wESTERN PESSIMISM
In France and the US, only 13 percent and 22 percent of those polled agreed with the proposition, the survey found.
However, one-quarter of those polled in Asia said that they would shoulder a financial burden because they have to take care of their parents, the survey found.
In Taiwan, 24 percent of respondents were worried about the expenses needed to support their parents, while almost 29 percent of respondents in Singapore and China had similar concerns.
Only 10 percent of those polled in Taiwan thought the government would look after them in retirement, compared with 3 percent in India, 3 percent in Singapore, 9 percent in Malaysia, 11 percent in Hong Kong and 18 percent in South Korea, the survey said.
In China, however, as many as 40 percent of respondents expected that the government would provide retirees with pensions and that those funds would become their only source of financial support.
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