Lecture title:

Demand for Long Term Care Service in an Ageing Society——A Survey Analysis in Beijing, China

Abstract:

Triggered by rapid aging of population, the social demand for long term care is substantially increasing in China. Due to the shrinkage of family size and lifestyle change, however, family care that used to play an important role in traditional Chinese society becomes gradually weak and ineffective. For compensation it is urgent to provide socialized caring service for the elderly, and how to provide sufficient and affordable services corresponding to limited resources and income levels of people becomes a critical policy issue. Taking Beijing as the study area, we addressed this issue by scrutinizing elder people’s living conditions and demand for long term care. First, a questionnaire survey was conducted in 6 communities representing the main residential types in Beijing. Based on their choice in different lifecycle stage, the decision making process for elder people to select from different caring patterns was modeled. the preference of different people for nursing homes with respect to the characteristics of facilities was also examined, and the diversities of preference across communities were analyzed. The result provided a plenty of policy implications for addressing the elderly caring issues.