The Study On Disabled Elderly With The Life Course Perspective

The most turbulent flood is the rapid growth of the disabled elderly population inthe current tide of global population aging, and which has been attract widespreadattentions in the countries and regions with serious aging problem. According to thelatest statistics that published by the Ministry of Civil Affairs of the People’s Republicof China, there are0.194billion elder population in China, which including almost40million disabled elderly. Such a larger population of disabled elderly formed a severepressure to China’s aging services system.This dissertation focuses on the disabled elderly--a hot issue in the currentaging process within the scope of the application of sociology. After summarizeanalysis to the aging process in China, the disabled elderly and the life course theory,the author finishes a Two-Step Cluster analysis to the survey data from Beijing withfour resolution indexes: age, sex, degree of disabled and family economic status. Ninecases were chosen from the interview data in the light of characteristics of the threecategories of disabled elderly that divided by the statistical software SPSS17.0. Then,the author does a study on the disabled trajectory with the life course perspective toexplore the mechanism of action of the initial accumulation factors and temporalaccumulation factors on disabled elderly, and the way is do a retrospective analysis tothe significant life events, turning points, transitions in the life experience of thedisabled elderly.The study found that the “significant life events” in the life of disabled elderlyare turning points in their disabled trajectory; these events may be family events, maybe business events, may be common events in the life, and may be unexpectedaccidents. In fact, many significant life events are mostly just ordinary life events, thereason why call them “significant” are that they can generate great force and cause thetransition from normal state to disabled state in the life trajectory of disabled elderly.The author summarizes three disability trajectories, the disability trajectorycaused by cumulative factors, the disability trajectory caused by unexpected factors,and the disability trajectory caused by social and environmental factors, after the analysis of disability history of three groups of disabled elderly people. What is more,three strategies to deal with disability in elder’s life were presented. Followingreference the experience and practice of relatively sound care system of disabledelderly in countries, such as Germany, Japan, USA, the author puts forwardpreliminary constructive thinkings to the construction of the Chinese disability elderlycare system.