Old Age Support in Contemporary Urban China from Both Parents’ and Children’s Perspectives

Abstract

This article explores the links between old age support and the characteristics of both parents and children drawing on survey data collected in Baoding, China, in 1994. Three specific forms of support are examined: monetary transfers, in-kind gifts, and help with daily activities. Hierarchical modeling is applied to the analysis from children’s perspective to control for the unobserved family heterogeneity. Results indicate that intergenerational support within families is currently the major source of old age security in Chinese society. Analyses from both parents’ and children’s perspectives support the corporate group/mutual aid model, which largely sees the provision of help as dependent on elderly parents’needs and children’s capacities. Although living away from children does not affect whether elderly parents receive economic help, it does constrain their receiving help on daily activities. Policy implications of the findings are discussed.

How does internal migration affect the emotional health of elderly parents left-behind?

“…In this study, we focus on respondents aged 60 or above. Since the main purpose of migration is to seek better work opportunities (Lee and Xiao 1998;Chen 1998;Sun 2002), we further restrict the sample to working age children above the age of 16 years. This finally leaves us with 6189 observations with non-missing values.…”

Coresidence with elderly parents and female labor supply in China

“…The first is whether the woman has any surviving brother and the second is whether the woman has any surviving sister. Under the patrilineal and patrilocal extended family model in China, elderly persons are expected to live with adult sons and their wives (Sun 2002;Whyte 2005;Whyte and Xu 2003), while matrilocal coresidence -parents coresiding with their married daughter -is also becoming more prevalent in China (Chu, Xie, and Yu 2011). Thus women's possibility of coresidence with parents will be greatly reduced if they have a brother, and, to a lesser extent, if they have a sister (Zhang, Gu, and Luo 2014).…”

Intergenerational Housing Support Between Retired Old Parents and their Children in Urban China

“…In this sense, the Chinese family is 'modern'. Later studies offer some evidence to support Logan and Bian's point by stressing the need for care by parents (Sereny, 2011;Sun, 2002).…”