Two thousand dollars a month is close to the average Social Security benefit received by retired American workers today. Whether that income is enough, however, depends not only on the amount itself, but also on where it is spent and which risks the retiree must pay for personally.
In the United States, $2,000 a month is hardly generous even when it only needs to cover ordinary living expenses. Once long-term care becomes necessary, Social Security can pay only a small portion of the cost of a nursing home. In China, however, the same income converts to RMB 13,400 a month at an exchange rate of RMB 6.7 to the dollar. If housing has already been secured, that income may cover not only daily living and routine medical expenses, but also all or most of the cost of a residential eldercare facility.
We now have enough data on basic living expenses, rent, medical care, and long-term care in both countries to place the same retiree in two different systems and see what ultimately happens to a $200,000 retirement portfolio.
First, the Assumptions Must Be the Same
The person in this model is single and begins at age 70 with $200,000 in financial assets. The value of an owner-occupied home is not counted as a financial asset. The retiree receives $2,000 a month in Social Security benefits, or $24,000 a year, and the portfolio is assumed to earn a steady annual return of 4%.
The model follows this person from age 70 through age 90. It includes a one-time $60,000 major-illness expense at age 85 and tests two long-term care scenarios. In the five-year scenario, care begins at age 85 and continues through age 90. In the ten-year scenario, it begins at age 80 and continues through age 90.
To maintain the simplified framework used in earlier articles, all expenses are expressed at current prices without adding inflation year by year. The assumed 4% investment return is also only a modeling assumption. The results are useful for comparing two retirement paths, but they are not forecasts of future investment returns or actual bills twenty years from now.
The main model assumes that the retiree owns a mortgage-free home in either country. Renting is treated separately as a stress test. This avoids an earlier imbalance in which housing was assumed to be secured in China while rent was included in the American budget.
A Paid-Off Home Does Not Eliminate Living Costs
The 2025 Elder Index, developed by the University of Massachusetts Boston, estimates that a healthy single older adult who owns a mortgage-free home in the United States still needs approximately $25,944 a year to live independently at a basic level.
That amount includes property taxes, homeowners insurance, utilities, food, transportation, Medicare and out-of-pocket health expenses, communications, and basic household goods. It does not include travel, entertainment, savings, gifts to children, or long-term care. In other words, “mortgage-free” does not mean that housing costs fall to zero. 2025 Elder Index
The gap between $24,000 in annual Social Security income and $25,944 in basic living expenses is $1,944. That is not a large shortfall, and a $200,000 portfolio can easily cover it under normal circumstances. What changes the outcome is the combination of a major illness and long-term care late in life.
China does not publish a specific “basic living basket” for a single retiree. This model therefore starts with the National Bureau of Statistics’ 2025 urban household expenditure data and then adjusts for the fact that a person living alone cannot divide utilities, communications, and property-related expenses among several household members. The resulting basic living budget is set at RMB 3,000 a month.
That amount includes approximately RMB 1,400 for food and occasional inexpensive meals outside the home, RMB 300 for transportation, RMB 300 for water, electricity, and gas, RMB 150 for communications, RMB 150 for property management and minor home maintenance, RMB 500 for clothing, cleaning supplies, and personal necessities, and RMB 200 for other essentials. The annual total is RMB 36,000, or approximately $5,373.
Medical expenses are calculated separately. Under the assumptions established in the earlier model, the retiree sets aside $1,500 a year for routine medical care, equivalent to RMB 10,050. A single retiree living in a paid-off home in China therefore spends approximately RMB 46,050 a year on basic living and routine medical care, or about $6,873. China’s 2025 household expenditure data
Why the Same $2,000 Leaves a Surplus in China
At an exchange rate of RMB 6.7 to the dollar, $2,000 a month becomes RMB 13,400. After basic living and routine medical expenses, the retiree may still have approximately RMB 9,562 left each month.
To avoid making the China scenario overly optimistic, the model does not assume that all of this surplus is reinvested. If annual income covers annual expenses, the retiree does not withdraw from the original $200,000 portfolio, but the remaining Social Security income is not automatically added to future investment balances.
Even renting does not fundamentally change the result. In August 2026, the average residential rent across 50 major Chinese cities was RMB 34.02 per square meter per month. A 50-square-meter apartment would therefore cost approximately RMB 1,701 a month, or RMB 20,412 a year. China Index Academy’s 50-city residential rental index
After rent is added, the single retiree’s basic living, routine medical, and housing expenses total approximately RMB 5,539 a month—still far below the RMB 13,400 received from Social Security.
In Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, an ordinary 50-square-meter apartment may cost more than RMB 4,000 a month. Non-housing expenses should also be increased from RMB 3,000 to about RMB 4,000 in these higher-cost cities. Even after including $1,500 a year for routine medical care, total monthly expenses would be approximately RMB 8,838, still below the RMB 13,400 monthly income.
Rent creates much greater pressure in the United States. According to the Elder Index, a single older renter needs approximately $34,032 a year to meet basic expenses. That is $10,032 more than the retiree’s $24,000 annual Social Security income. Even before serious illness or disability occurs, withdrawals from savings are already necessary.
Long-Term Care Is What Truly Widens the Gap
In 2025, the national median cost of a semi-private nursing-home room in the United States was $114,975 a year, or approximately $9,581 a month. Nursing-home charges generally include housing, meals, and basic care, but they do not eliminate the need to pay Medicare premiums, prescription drug costs, medical cost-sharing, and personal expenses. This model reserves an additional $8,000 a year for those items, bringing total annual costs during the nursing-home stage to approximately $122,975. CareScout Cost of Care Survey
After subtracting $24,000 in annual Social Security income, the retiree still faces an asset shortfall of nearly $99,000 each year while receiving nursing-home care in the United States.
In China, a residential eldercare facility charging RMB 10,000 a month costs approximately $17,910 a year. After adding $1,500 for routine medical expenses, the annual total is about $19,410—still below the retiree’s $24,000 Social Security income. The original portfolio would generally not need to be touched.
At RMB 15,000 a month, residential care plus routine medical expenses would total approximately $28,366 a year, requiring only about $4,366 from assets. Even at the higher level of RMB 20,000 a month, the annual asset shortfall would be approximately $13,321—still far below the nearly $99,000 annual gap in the United States.
Once the period of care becomes longer, the difference between the two countries is no longer merely a difference in everyday prices. It becomes a difference in the speed at which retirement assets are consumed.
How Long Can $200,000 Actually Last?
With a paid-off home, a retiree remaining in the United States would need approximately $300,000 at age 70 to cover ordinary living expenses, a $60,000 major illness at age 85, and five final years of nursing-home care without relying on Medicaid before age 90. If care lasts ten years, the required starting assets rise to approximately $591,000.
If the retiree begins with only $200,000, assets would likely be exhausted between ages 87 and 88 in the five-year care scenario. In the ten-year scenario, the money could run out between ages 82 and 83. Without support from children, long-term care insurance, or other property, Medicaid would then become the payer of last resort.
If the retiree rents in the United States, approximately $390,000 would be needed for the five-year care scenario and about $657,000 for the ten-year scenario. Someone beginning with $200,000 could exhaust those assets between ages 86 and 87, or between 81 and 82, respectively.
The outcome in China is very different. At the RMB 10,000 monthly care level, Social Security can generally cover living expenses, routine medical care, and residential care whether care lasts five years or ten. Only about $33,000 in present-value assets at age 70 would be needed to prepare for the $60,000 major-illness expense at age 85.
At RMB 15,000 a month, the required starting assets are approximately $44,000 for five years of care and $57,000 for ten years. At RMB 20,000 a month, the figures rise to approximately $66,000 and $106,000.
If the retiree already has $200,000 at age 70—and if unused Social Security income is conservatively excluded from reinvestment—the portfolio could still contain approximately $365,000 at age 90 under the RMB 10,000 care scenario. At RMB 15,000, approximately $342,000 could remain after five years of care and $313,000 after ten years. At RMB 20,000, approximately $293,000 could remain after five years and $205,000 after ten.
These figures do not mean that retiring in China is necessarily better. Chinese eldercare facilities vary greatly in nurse staffing, dementia care, rehabilitation, nighttime response, and medical support. An ethnic Chinese retiree with foreign citizenship must also consider immigration status, eligibility for Chinese health insurance, language, and family support. None of these questions can be answered by looking at price alone.
The model does, however, reveal one clear economic reality. The same $2,000 monthly Social Security benefit barely approaches the cost of ordinary life in the United States. Once nursing-home care begins, assets may fall by nearly $100,000 a year. In China, the same income may cover daily life and all or most long-term care expenses.
The real question in cross-border retirement planning is therefore not simply where life is cheaper. It is how far retirement income stands from the risks of old age. In the United States, a vast financial gap separates Social Security from the cost of long-term care. In China, that gap may shrink to a level that an ordinary retirement portfolio can realistically absorb.
The income has not changed. What changes is how much daily life, how much care, and how much security that income can buy.
This article is part of the Chinese Voices “Cross-Border Retirement Ledger” series. The series does not attempt to decide where retirement is “better.” Instead, it examines medical care, long-term care, income, and assets to calculate—one item at a time—the financial risks that cross-border retirement actually requires people to bear.
By Voice in Between
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