Long-term care (LTC) policy is at an experimental stage in China, characterized by various regional pilot programs. The public cost of LTC is difficult to estimate due to a lack of clarity about policy detail from the central government. This article analyzes the current disabled status for vulnerable older people without sufficient financial resources and family supports. It focuses on estimating a safety net public subsidy policy for LTC services in China, both for today and into the future, using China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey (CHARLS) data, 2011 wave, with the methods of multinomial logistic regression and simulation. The key contribution is to estimate the future disability trend and LTC public cost based on changes in education, population ageing, and urbanization. Disability prevalence might be decreasing partly due to higher education, urbanization, and better health care, and the overall public LTC costs might be growing by the results of projection.
In an era of rapid aging and shrinking family sizes, only children have gradually become the main providers of old-age support. China offers a unique opportunity to investigate old-age support provision in one-child families due to its strict family planning policies. Using four-wave panel data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, we ask whether old-age support in one-child families is more or less motivated by parental investments than in multi-child families. Results show a coexistence of fairness maintenance thesis and singleton compensation thesis: children’s returns to parents in one-child families are weakly motivated by their parents’ large-sum investments, but strongly motivated by parental daily transfers. In one-child families, sons are more obliged to provide old-age support in return for parental transfers than are daughters. The policy implications for old-age support provision in an aging society with a declining family size are also discussed.
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