Wendy Liu has grown to dread the sound of her phone.

These days, most calls mean a parent of the 47-year-old vocational school teacher has been rushed to the hospital. Whether her mother with Alzheimer’s disease or her father with cancer, any emergency means a long, anxious drive from work to her home in Guangzhou – a stress-ridden trip she has made on countless nights.

Liu and her husband Deng Jie are members of China’s first generation of only children. Born in 1977 – only a year after the country instituted a one-child limit for most urban households – they not only have to raise two children, but also care for four ageing parents.

The National Committee on Ageing has released a set of guidelines for the Silver Age Action initiative, introduced two decades ago to promote volunteer work by the elderly, according to a statement on Friday from the civil affairs ministry.

“[We aim to] upgrade Silver Age Action, improving its quality and effectiveness, to safeguard the rights of the elderly to participate in economic and social development, as well as achieve meaningful social engagement,” the guidelines say.

A falling birth rate and rising life expectancy have aged China’s population, shrunk the workforce, and raised questions about outdated retirement policies and the sustainability of public pension schemes. This has long prompted discussion of the need to raise retirement ages set during an earlier stage of the country’s development, which are now lower than in other major economies and trading partners.

It is never a good time to tell people they have to work longer and put in more and get less back, let alone amid an uneven economic recovery from the pandemic slowdown and a tightening job market in which youth unemployment has been rising again.

The National People’s Congress Standing Committee has grasped the nettle, with a plan to gradually raise retirement ages by up to five years over a 15-year transition period. The decision is overdue but at least the issue is not being dragged out any further.