Introduction: People Oriented: A New Stage of Social Welfare Development in China
Alongside 35 years of economic development, China’s social welfare system has also undergone rapid change. The Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA) is facing pressure to provide more services to the people it has served in the past, such as orphans, older people without families, and people with disabilities. The MCA is also facing pressure to provide new services to social groups that were not previously covered, such as orphans in communities, “left-behind children” whose parents have migrated to the cities for work. New service projects have been created overnight, as happened with free school lunches and school buses. Local governments, especially governments in relatively developed areas, are competing in welfare provision to see who can provide more and better services. Walking in the streets of Beijing, it is not unusual to see advertisements in supermarkets or in residential areas, along the lines of, “The government will provide a free pair of glasses to Beijing residents aged above a certain number of years” or “The government is providing a free health check (or a free flu injection) for all Beijing eligible residents in attendance at a particular time and place.” This new trend is vastly different from even a few years ago, when the role of government in welfare provision was strictly residual and welfare was generally regarded as the private responsibility of families for whom policy support was rare. At that time, the state
Harsh choices: Chinese women's paid work and unpaid care responsibilities under economic reform.
China's economic reforms over the past three decades have dramatically changed the mechanisms for allocating goods and labour in both market and non-market spheres. This article examines the social and economic trends that intensify the pressure on the care economy, and on women in particular in playing their dual roles as care givers and income earners in post-reform China. The analysis sheds light on three critical but neglected issues. How does the reform process reshape the institutional arrangements of care for children and elders? How does the changing care economy affect women's choices between paid work and unpaid care responsibilities? And what are the implications of women's work–family conflicts for the well-being of women and their families? The authors call for a gendered approach to both social and labour market policies, with investments in support of social reproduction services so as to ease the pressures on women.
Primary Family Caregivers of Impaired Elderly in Shanghai, China
This study investigates kin differences in caregiver burden using a 1989 survey of impaired elderly and their caregivers from Shanghai, China. Indicators of caregiver burden include feelings of fatigue, loss of personal time, and expressed need for formal service support. To explain kin differences, four factors are analyzed: caregiving involvement, elderly need for care, familial support, and sociodemographic characteristics of the caregiver. Findings indicate that wives and married daughters express the greatest feelings of fatigue and loss of personal time. Kin differences on these dimensions are explained by caregiving involvement and elderly need for care. In contrast, the child generation, particularly married sons and daughters-in-law, express the greatest need for formal service support. This is related to their greater reliance on familial support from non-coresiding relatives and to sociodemographic characteristics reflecting a less traditional cultural orientation and greater economic resources to pay for services. Implications for service delivery are discussed.