Research On Old-age Security For The Elderly Left-behind In Rural China

The reform and opening-up policy of China, which begins from 1980s, has brought China into a high-speed development period. The urbanization in China is quickly advanced so that a large number of young rural labors flood into the urban areas and the number of the elderly in rural China goes up heavily as many as more than 20 millions now. As a objective social phenomenon,the problems of the elderly left-behind in rural China have been focused on increasingly and have to be solved urgently in the construction of socialist new countryside. So, the research on the living condition of the left-behind old people in rural areas and the probing on the ode-age security mechanism about them have great significance to the socialist new countryside construction and the problem of aging population in China.In this paper, L village, which belongs to Linqi Town, Minquan County, Henan Province, was selected to do a empirical research. We have investigated the basic living condition of the left-behind old people in China from four aspects including economic support, living care, spirit consolation and mutual assistance mechanism from outer communities. We found some problems in the old-age social security of the left-behind old people, such as weak economic supporting, failed living care, absent spirit consolation and unsound social mutual assistance mechanism, as same as the reasons of these problems, mainly including the urban and rural duality security system that caused the delay of rural old-age security system construction in China, the government took its responsibility too slowly, the security function of family and land became weaker, the social mutual assistance mechanism was unsound and the participation of the enterprise and individual is not very active. In the end, the text puts forward to some solutions on the security problems of the rural left-behind old people in China. We suggested establishing a urban-rural social security system by promoting urbanization construction and building a interim model of urban-rural social security system suited to our national conditions, the government should undertake its responsibility, the security function of family and land asset should be strengthened, the mutual assistance mechanism from rural communities should be improved. In the meantime, we advocate enterprises should participate in the project actively and the elderly left-behind in rural China should enhance the ability of self-protection and other measures to shape a social security network left-behind for the left-behind old people in rural areas of China.