Research On Influences Of The Out-work Children To The Old-age Needs Of The Elderly Left-behind In Rural Areas

The practical experience of economic and social development shows that the transformation of any country into a modern state is inevitably accompanied by a large amount of surplus rural labor,which gradually moves into urban areas and concentrates in economically developed areas.In China,the influx of a large number of migrant workers has brought huge economic dividends to urban and coastal economic development and has given a strong impetus to local economic and social development.At the same time,the restrictions of China’s household registration system make it difficult for the elderly and children to move into the city with migrant workers to live,study and work.At the same time,there are many artificial barriers set by various urban departments,which make it difficult for parents and children to live together with migrant workers in cities.In addition,under the traditional view,rural retirement is mainly based on children’s support,but the massive outflow and migration of labor force has led to a great challenge to this kind of the traditional retirement model.Therefore,in general,the old-age needs of the elderly in rural areas are not being met.The life care from children has become somewhat shortage,the psychological support from children has become somewhat scarce,and the communication with children is inadequate.More seriously,the unfulfilled needs of the elderly in old age will cause the spiritual life of the elderly in rural areas to fall into a low point,and they will have the emotional state of dissipating the meaning of life.They feel that life has no meaning and value.Obviously,if these problems are not be solved in time and effective methods,and which will bring great harm to the physical and mental health of the left-behind elderly in rural areas,and will also have impacts on the healthy development and stability of the rural economy and society.Therefore,how to solve the old-age needs of the left-behind elderly in rural areas,which affects the economic and social development and stability in rural areas,has become an important issue in front of government’s policy makers.However,the prerequisite for solving this problem is to accurately grasp: what kind of impact will the out-work children for the old-age needs of the left-behind elderly? How much of an impact it really has? What are the logical mechanisms behind the impact?Only by accurately understanding and answering these questions can this issue be fundamentally understood and then effectively solve it,after that,which can contributes to the overall realization of the strategic objectives of transforming the functions of our government,strengthening on the rural social governance,promoting to the rural revitalization and achieving common prosperity in society.Based on the previous description and understanding,and in view of the fact that the old-age needs of the left-behind elderly in rural areas are significantly different from the other social groups,and based on the literature on the needs of the elderly left-behind in rural areas and the relevant basic theoretical research,we have conducted deeoly analysis of the old-age needs of the left-behind elderly in rural areas based on the Alderfer’s ERG theory,and have accordingly classified the old-age needs of the left-behind elderly in rural areas.At the same time,based on the investigation of the current situation of the old-age needs in the rural left-behind elderly,the study analyzed deeply the mechanism of the influence.Then,this paper mainly focus on the content of the factors,directions,degrees and mechanism of the influence of the out-work children to the old-age needs of the left-behind elderly,and use of the data from the 2017micro-survey "Survey to the Old-age Needs in Labour Outflow Areas",and then,mainly to use empirical research methods including Ordered Probit,IV-Ordered Probit and Propensity Score Matching(PSM).and then to explore the impact of the out-work children to work for the old-age needs of the left-behind elderly,which include the daily life cares,the mental health support,the social interactions and ultimately for influences of the spiritual supports,and further to explore the details about the internal mechanisms and effects of the impact of the forgoing for the old-age needs to the left-behind elderly.All in all,the study conclusions and the findings of the study are as follows.Firstly,it’s not optimistic that the old-age needs of the left-behind elderly in rural areas with the place of the labor outflow currently.Based on the micro-survey data,this paper classified the old-age needs of the left-behind elderly into four dimensions,including“Life cares”,“Psychological support”,“Social interaction”,“Spiritual support”,and then from these four dimensions,to conducts the statistical analysis of the old-age needs of the left-behind elderly in rural areas.And then,according to the results which is not optimistic to the old-age needs of the left-behind elderly,both in terms of the overall situation and sub-indicators.There are a high proportion of the demand gaps in the three areas of “the life care needs”,“the psychological support needs” and “the social interaction needs”,and an even greater demand gap in the area of “the spiritual support needs”,due to the aboved influencing factors.Secondly,the children’s decision to out-work which will lead to a negative impact on the satisfaction level of life care of the left-behind elderly in rural areas,and this kind of impact has obvious heterogeneous characteristics.On the one hand,the longer the children choose to go out to work,the more pronounced gap in life care needs of the left-behind parents,and the lower the level of satisfaction with life care of the left-behind parents;the longer the time spent away from work,the longer the separation from the parents,and the less life care services the parents receive from their children,which makes it difficult to meet the life care needs of the left-behind parents under other fixed conditions.The longer parents are separated from their children,the less care they receive from their children.On the other hand,the further away the children choose to go out to work,the greater the gap in parental care needs;the further away they work,the fewer opportunities they have to receive care services from their children,and the more difficult it is to meet the care needs of left-behind parents when other conditions are fixed.Therefore,for the left-behind elderly,their children’s choice to out-work has a negative influence on their satisfactions with life-care needs,both in terms of when and where they go to work.Thirdly,the choice of children to go out to work significantly increases the loneliness of left-behind parents,thus significantly reducing the self-assessment level of mental health of rural left-behind elderly.The results of the heterogeneity analysis show that the more distant the children go out to work and the longer they go out to work,the greater and more obvious this negative impact will be,among the possible reasons are:on the one hand,due to the relatively backward retirement protection in rural areas,the financial pressure on adult children to support their parents will gradually increase,and they can only choose to go to urban or economically developed areas to work in order to obtain a higher income;at the same time,parents,as their children choose to go out to work,cannot get enough psychological support from their children,and naturally feel psychological loneliness.However,it should be noted that the more distant the place of employment and the longer the period of employment,the lower the degree of psychological emptiness of the left-behind elderly.On the other hand,children going out to work can bring a higher level of economic income to the family and the left-behind parents,which to a certain extent can compensate for the psychological emptiness of the left-behind parents caused by the children going out to work,but children going out to work will reduce the daily life care for the left-behind parents,and will reduce the spiritual support and comfort for the left-behind parents.All these will reduce the psychological satisfaction and self-assessment of mental health of the left-behind parents.Fourthly,the choice of children to go out to work significantly reduces the social interaction satisfaction level of the left-behind elderly,and this negative impact shows a significant heterogeneity.It should be noted that the negative impact of children’s long-distance work on the satisfaction level of social interaction activities of the left-behind elderly is greater,while in contrast,the impact of children’s short-distance work on the satisfaction level of social interaction of the left-behind elderly is smaller.Further analysis of the mechanism reveals that the children’s work outside the home mainly increases the service work of the left-behind elderly,such as taking care of the left-behind children instead of the children,undertaking household chores and agricultural production work,which greatly reduces the leisure time of the left-behind elderly and is obviously not conducive to the improvement of the left-behind elderly’s social interaction satisfaction.At the same time,the positive mediating effect test did not pass the significance test,indicating that although children’s working outside the home can increase the income level of the left-behind parents,it does not improve the social interaction satisfaction level of the rural left-behind elderly.Fifthly,in general,the choice of children to go out to work has both positive and negative effects on the spiritual care of the left-behind elderly.Among them,children go out to work will bring negative impact on the spiritual support needs of the rural elderly left-behind by lowering the level of social interaction,psychological support and life care,but the net effect is still unknown because children going out to work will bring economic abundance to the left-behind parents so that their spiritual support needs can be satisfied to some extent.The OLS empirical analysis suggests that the net effect of the spiritual care dimension on the needs generated by the rural left-behind elderly is negative,i.e.the positive impact is less than the negative impact.Considering possible endogenous problematic effects,the paper also introduces a Propensity Score Matching(PSM)approach,which shows that the negative effect is not overturned,although the extent of the effect is narrowed,but the negative effect remains.A subsequent heterogeneity analysis found that the longer and more distant the children had been away from their home,the greater negative impacts on the left-behind elderly of their children away home.The subsequent mechanistic analysis also found that out-work children will lead to the negative effects that the level of spiritual support of the left-behind elderly through mediating variables such as social interaction,psychological needs and care needs.The main reasons for this result are that,on the one hand,children going out to work leads to increased pressure on the labor activities of the left-behind elderly,who have to take on more responsibilities such as childcare and agricultural work,which prevent them from making their own arrangements for their old-age needs,and the greater pressure of life is obviously not conducive to the satisfaction of their spiritual support needs.On the other hand,out-work children can bring more economic income to the left-behind elderly,which is conducive to better living conditions for the left-behind parents,and the level of spiritual support for the left-behind elderly will be higher obviously when they are faced with less distress in life.