Social Exclusion Of The Urban Elderly People Living Alone

This study was undertaken to discuss the social exclusion risks and its affection faced by the empty-nest elders in urban area. Based on the survey of 228 empty-nest elders living in D Street in Shanghai including in-depth interviews with six elders, the study found the empty-nest elders faced severe social exclusion risks. Lacking of needed guarantee of income, health care, daily life support and normal social life, these elders suffered sever loneliness in the spirit and live outside the mainstream of their society.Although China has begin to develop its old-age support service, it failures to solve the problems that empty-nest elders faced and failures to help them integrated into the society due to lack of standardized and systematical regulation service and without considering the particularity of the empty-nest elders. To effectively solve the social exclusion problem that empty-nest elders faced, this study suggests setting up subsistence allowance system and medical assistance system to give a material guarantee for empty-nest elders and try to establish a social service mechanism for those elders with the core of "government purchase service, society undertake operation, labor' professional service and volunteer's active participation," so to provide enough daily life care and rich social life for the empty-nest elders.