Changing landscape

Yu Hai, a sociology professor at Fudan University, said the emergence of elderly drifters is closely linked to broader changes happening in society.

"In Chinese culture, it has long been a tradition for older generations to help raise the children of the young. This form of intergenerational support is not new, but the scale and visibility of today's elderly drifters make it a distinctive social phenomenon," Yu said.

"The expansion of higher education and large-scale urbanization has drawn young people from all over the country into cities — especially major and supersized ones — in search of employment and opportunity. Under the combined influence of tradition, education, industrialization and urbanization, a unique 'elderly drifter landscape' has taken shape in China's largest cities."

The exact number of elderly drifters is hard to quantify.

The population aged 60 and above in China reached 264 million, accounting for approximately 18.70 percent of the national population, according to the Seventh National Population Census conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics conducted in late 2020.

The total number of people living separately from their household registration (hukou) was 493 million, an increase of 88.52 percent compared with the previous census. The migrant population reached 375 million, a year-on-year increase of 69.73 percent. Among this vast mobile population, elderly drifters formed a significant group, the census said.

A 2023 study by Donghua University in Shanghai found that from 2017 to 2020,Shanghai had approximately 610,000 to 650,000 non-local elderly residents, accounting for 8 to 12 percent of both the city's migrant population and registered elderly population.