| In the social context of China’s new urbanization and rapid aging,this paper investigates the impact of the daily care needs of rural elderly people’s daily care needs on the migration strategies of children’s families,using data from China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study（CHARLS）2015.In this paper,the daily care needs of the elderly are measured by the internationally accepted ADL and IADL indicators as well as the self-rated health of the elderly;children’s migration strategy includes three dimensions: whether children migration or not,children’s migration distance and children’s migration status,etc.At the same time,according to the family life cycle and role theory,this paper also explores the effects of the age of the elderly and the gender of children on the migration strategy of the children’s family.The logit model and Inverse Probability of Treatment Weighting（IPTW）estimation results show that（1）the daily care needs of the elderly can significantly affect children’s family migration strategies and migration distances.Specifically,compared with elderly without care needs,children’s family migration odds decreased for elderly with care needs,and children’s family migration distances was closer for elderly with care needs.（2）The daily care needs of the elderly negatively affect son’s family migration strategies and positively affect daughter’s family migration strategies.Specifically,the odds of migration for sons but not for daughters will decrease for elderly people with care needs,but increase for daughters.（3）The daily care needs of the elderly will negatively affects children’s overall family migration,but not the partial migration of the children’s family.（4）The self-rated health of elderly will affect children’s family migration strategy and distance,but not the whole or part of children’s family migration strategy.The better the self-rated health of the elderly,the higher the probability of children’s family migration and the longer the children’s family migration distance.（5）Only the 80-90 age group affects children’s family migration strategies and distances.The older the elderly,the less likely the children are to migrate,and the closer the children’s family is to migrate.（6）Children’s gender will significantly affect their migration strategies and distance.In general,daughters are more likely to migrate than sons,and daughters are also migrate over greater distances than sons.Based on the research findings,the author makes the following policy recommendations: On the macro level,the rural economy should be vigorously developed to narrow the gap between urban and rural development.The development of rural non-farm economy and industries can be encouraged to enhance the vitality of rural development and increase farmers’ non-farm income.We should also improve the level of rural health care and the health awareness of the rural elderly themselves.At the meso level,the main focus is on the family perspective.It focuses on the maintenance and integrity of family functions in the process of new urbanization construction.In addition,the public should change the traditional concept of care-giving and weaken the gender differences in elderly care,both in terms of self-care of the elderly and the sharing of care-giving obligations between sons and daughters should not be overly divided into gender differences.At the micro level,firstly,we should focus on the age difference of the elderly and carry out targeted social work for the elderly;secondly,we should enrich the form of child care and take multiple measures to meet the different care needs of the elderly;finally,we should stimulate the potential of the elderly themselves and enhance their self-care ability.The care needs of the elderly in rural areas must be met by the joint efforts of all parties,and this is a reality that must be addressed in the construction of a “human urbanization”. |
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