A Research On The Elderly Supporting Patterns In China

According to the well-accepted international standard, China joined the aging societies as early as in2000with its rapid aging and a large aging population base and it has become an aging nation with much more burdens of the old age supporting prior to an affluent one. Meanwhile, small-sized family and nuclear family undermine the traditional family-based old age supporting pattern. Consequently, caring for the elders in China has become a grave social issue, which attracts concerns from the government and the whole society. The approach to the patterns of supporting for the elderly in China is an important concern of the academic researches into this issue. As is known to all, China has a convention of supporting for the elders within households, but nowadays it is a plain fact that this function is weakening and the academic circle has reached consensus about this change. Under this circumstance, other old age supporting systems should be found to replace the traditional one in the hope of maintaining and promoting the living standard of the elderly. In fact, new and alternative patterns of old age supporting have emerged such as the social support pattern for the old age and the self support pattern for the old age. Now the problems are:to what point has the function of the present family-based old age supporting in China weakened? To what point have the newly-emerging social support pattern for the old age and the self support pattern for the old age developed? To what extent and in what respects can these new patterns replace the ever-weakening family-based supporting? All these problems cry out to be probed into. This research takes the approaches of Suzhou, Jiangsu Province as an example to address these issues above.This research is based upon the data obtained from the questionnaires designed towards the elderly people in Suzhou. It discovers that the function of the family-based old age supporting in the urban households in Suzhou has actually weakened, as is reflected in financial support, daily life caring and emotional consolation. Respectively, as for financial support, more than half of the children never give their aged parents money at all. Over60per cent of those who give money ’o their aged parents disburse less than RMB1500per year. Over70per cent of the children give their aged parents material support, namely purchasing for their parents, but the amount of this support is quite limited. As for daily life caring, be it taking care of ADL, IADL, or sickness caring, the family-based caring has dropped by a large margin. After all, about30per cent offers practically no caring to their aged parents and over20per cent offer them only occasional caring. As for the respect towards their parents, one source of emotional consolation for them, over30per cent of the children never consult their parents in big events. As for consolation,17.2per cent of the children cohabitating with their parents fail to have satisfactory communication with their parents and some even remain estranged from them.20up to30per cent of those who keep in touch with but live apart from their parents are unable to pay regular visits to or telephone to inquire after their parents at times.Two alternative patterns of old age supporting appear in urban areas in China as the family-based old age supporting weakens:the social support pattern for the old age and the self support pattern for the old age, both of which have made some advances in terms of financial support, daily life caring and emotional consolation. But for the social support pattern alone, its current advance is mainly reflected in financial support. The establishment of a variety of urban social security systems and the comparatively high standards of well-being, have replaced the family-based old age supporting system with the social support system as one of the most significant sources of financial support for the elderly urban residents in Suzhou. As a result, the social support system has become a major substitute for the weakening family-based financial support. But for the self support pattern for the aged, it has made comparatively prominent progress in daily life caring and emotional consolation. As for IADL of daily life caring, the self-sufficient supporting pattern is the largest supporter, the second largest being the family-based supporting and the least the socially-supported caring. With respect to emotional consolation, the elderly are difficult to find an ideal subject to whom they may confess their irritations or air their grievances and thus they obtain most emotional consolation from themselves rather than from their family.Whether the family-based old supporting pattern can be sustained or even be enhanced in the future depends on various influential factors such as the old people’s education, dwelling, pension, the monthly income and their children’s education and financial condition. Therefore, the family-based old age supporting pattern will certainly function more in the future. In the mean time, the education of the elderly, the number of their children and their dwelling in urban areas in the future will experience a steady increase of the demands for institution-based old age caring system while the health and educational conditions in the future call for an increase of community-based old age caring in urban areas. Several factors such as the old people’s education, their monthly income and dwelling, affect the development of the self-sufficient old age supporting which calls for a steady growth in the proportion of the old age caring savings among the elderly urban residents in Suzhou. Therefore, judging either from the present development or its tendency, the old age supporting patterns in China should be a systemic combination of the family support pattern, the social support pattern and the self support pattern. Different supporting patterns account for different percentage of the whole old age supporting system and they feed on each other and make compensations for each other in a joint effort to meet the demands of the old age supporting in China.