Silver lining: Tutoring the elderly is growing fast in China

investing.com:

By Farah Master, Tingshu Wang and Xiaoyu Yin

HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) — China's rapidly aging population is fuelling a promising and fast-growing market for companies providing recreational classes and activities for the elderly middle class, from yoga to African drumming and smartphone photography.

The growth potential of the industry contrasts sharply with the decline of the after-school private tutoring sector following a government crackdown in 2021 aimed at boosting record low birth rates by lowering education costs.

«Education industries are transitioning to the silver economy,» said Qiu Peilin, the Beijing head of Mama Sunset, an elderly learning business which has opened five centres in the Chinese capital since launching in April 2023.

Consulting firm Frost & Sullivan expects China's senior learning market to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 34% by 2027 to 120.9 billion yuan ($16.8 billion), up from 28 billion yuan in 2022.

It's a numbers game.

Over the next decade, roughly 300 million Chinese will enter retirement — the equivalent of almost the entire U.S. population. One in every two people aged over 65 in the Asia-Pacific region will live in China by 2040, Euromonitor estimates.

While China's demographic crisis is threatening its industrial base, government finances and poverty alleviation efforts, some investors see the growing pool of elderly as a sure bet.

Mama Sunset, which offers 20 different classes to thousands of Chinese aged 50-plus, is in talks with domestic investors to expand to 200 franchised centres across the country in the next three years, when it wants to list on the Hong Kong exchange.

Nasdaq-listed Quantasing, the largest online elderly learning provider in China according to