China's Rural Old-age Resource Allocation Study

Traditionally, with family elder-caring model being prevalent for many years, rural social endowment insurance system has been built up after the Reform and Opening up. As a matter of fact, due to the rural economic and social changes and urban-rural dualistic economy as well, rural elder-caring becomes increasingly serious, under the circumstances of which scholars has come up with the concept of elder-caring resources in conjunction with intense studies from diverse perspective, such as the demand and supply of rural elder-caring resources, elder-caring models, the overall planning of rural elder-caring resources and foreign elder-caring in rural areas, all of which has laid a comparatively solid foundation for the future research. The problem, however, is that the previous research misses such significant points as the stipulation of the concept of elder-caring resources and the factors influencing the evolvement of it, let alone the quantitative analysis on the resources integration. To fill this blank, the paper, based on the discussion of the concept of elder-caring resources and the according allocating system, is meant to construct a general configuration structure, on the basis of which such issues will be studied in details as the configuration dilemma of the Chinese traditional elder-caring resources, its evolvement and relevant motivation, in order to find a way out to optimize the present resources configuration, to shift the focus of elder-caring system reform from government concern to that of the whole society, from the exclusive concern about elder endowment insurance system to that of elder-caring resources in a larger sense, so as to soften the rural pressure and that of population aging.A conclusion, therefore, can be safely reached that the present Chinese elder-caring resources configuration maintains at very low level, manifested as the followings: the weakness of the assisting system, the inefficiency of governmental mechanism, the backwardness of market mechanism together with the rural-urban disequilibrium and regional disequilibrium. Based on the analysis of Chinese GDP development, rural-urban differences and regional differences in terms of economy, cultures, value, legal construction, population aging and rural family structures, the paper points out that the assisting system can be gradually renewed by means of morality solidification, rural economy development and policy improvement; the governmental mechanism can be improved by legal construction, funds management reinforcement and better policy consistency; while the cultivation and strengthening of the commercial insurance awareness can be helpful to better the market mechanism of rural elder-caring system.The innovation of the paper lies in the following aspects:for one thing, a general structure has been set up that is helpful for the further study of the rational configuration of the rural elder-caring resources, i.e., the demand and supply of the resources, the according dynamic factors, the evolvement of the demand and supply in different times and the interactivity of them. Generally speaking, the demand is characterized by foresight, the supply hysteresis. In this light, the supply of the resources may as well be conditioned by the demand in order to realize the rationality of the resources configuration. For another, the paper enriches government mechanism, market mechanism and assisting mechanism respectively, on the basis of which a supporting system of rural elder-caring resources configuration has been successfully structured. Last but not least, after the detailed discussion of the motivation, economic and noneconomic, upon rural elder-caring resources configuration in China, the paper focuses on the establishment of the several models, such as Chinese GDP growth model, rural-urban income difference model and regional economy development model, followed by a cause-and-effect analysis and their influences upon rural elder-caring resources configuration, In the end, the basic principle and countermeasures have been put forward for the system and mechanism improvement of the rural elder-caring resources configuration in China, which, to some extent, may well throw light on the future research and policy-making in the field.