As Hong Kong became a developed entity, life expectancy in the territory improved greatly and the birth rate dropped significantly. Extended family was broken into nuclear family. By the late 1990s, only 29% of Hong Kong's three-million workforce was covered by formal retirement provisions, Hong Kong's social security system is faced with the demographic challenge of a growing number of elderly people in the future. There were some calls to establish a central provident fund and heated debates among government, politicians and trade unions in the early 1990s.