The Experience And Lessons Of Social Long-term Care Insurance In Japan And Its Enlightenment To Shanghai

With the speeding up of aging, the downsizing of family structure, the development of medical technology, and the change of life style, the problem of old age becomes more and more complicated. Now, the concept of pension scheme is not only the payment of pension, but also, in fact, concludes life or medical long-term care evoked by body functions' degeneration. And the elderly long-term care is not completely equal to the medical insurance. Under the background of traditional pension model, the elderly long-term care is usually supplied by female family member, but, this kind of family long-term care can not adapted to industrialization. What's more, the nuclearization of family structure and the increasing employment of women also weaken the family's care functions. Because of those reasons, the amounts of "Elders Living Alone" families are growing, and the risk in their senectitude is increasing. So, we need a socialized old people's long-term care system.There are three kinds of system to face up the long-term care risk in the world. The first model is the long-term care allowance system, like in British and Sweden. The Second model is the commercial long-term care insurance, like in America. The third model is social long-term care insurance, and the representational countries are Germany and Japan. In those countries, Japan is the typical country in Asia which implements social long-term care insurance and the system has been taken into practice for 10 years since 2000. Shanghai is the first city which enters into the aging period, and the aging rate in Shanghai is most high in China. This paper is going to research the mechanism of social long-term care insurance in Shanghai, on the base of analyzing and borrowing the experience and lessons form Japan. This paper can be departed into four parts. The first part is Introduction, including research background, research aim and Review of literature. The second part is to research the background and basic rationale of social long-term care insurance in Japan. The third part is to analyze each section of social long-term insurance in Japan, and to summarize the experience and lessons from it. On the comparison between Shanghai and Japan, the forth part is to research the feasibility of social long-term care insurance in Shanghai and give the skeleton and suggestion on the new system.All in all, social long-term care insurance is not equivalent to traditional social insurance. An effective social long-term care insurance system can not only supply a happy and soothing life for old people, but also can release the burden on their children. Further, the long-term care service belongs to labor-intensive industry, so it can be benefit to the increasing employment for our country. This paper hopes to research the experience and lessons from Japan, to give a mirror for Shanghai, and to develop the social and economical effect by social long-term care insurance system.