Jieyu Liu
Ageing and intergenerational care in rural China: a qualitative study of policy development
Liu, Jieyu; Cook, Joanne
Authors
Professor Joe Cook Joanne.Cook@hull.ac.uk
Professor in Organisational Behaviour/Human Resources Management
Abstract
The large-scale migration of younger workers from rural to urban China since the 1990s has separated many adult children from their ageing parents, thereby challenging traditional patterns of familial support in rural villages. Existing studies on ageing in rural China examining the familial support system show that families remain the main focus of support despite geographical separation. Less work has been done to capture the effects of recent changes in Chinese social policies for rural villages, including state pension provision and medical care, and the interaction between the familial support system and other sectors. Drawing on data from an ethnographic study of a rural village, this article adopts a ‘bottom-up’ approach to examine the implications of Chinese policy development for the provision of different types of old-age support. The findings suggest that current welfare provision in rural China is deeply embedded in a familial ideology with market, state and community sectors, indirectly or directly, relying on the family sector. Rather than being located in a dichotomised debate between familialisation and defamilialisation, this article reveals that villagers’ preferences are situated along a spectrum between familialisation and defamilialisation, shaped by local socio-cultural economic circumstances and different types of old-age support.
Citation
Liu, J., & Cook, J. (2020). Ageing and intergenerational care in rural China: a qualitative study of policy development. Contemporary Social Science, 15(3), 378-391. https://doi.org/10.1080/21582041.2018.1448943
| Journal Article Type | Article |
|---|---|
| Acceptance Date | Feb 27, 2018 |
| Online Publication Date | Mar 15, 2018 |
| Publication Date | Jul 2, 2020 |
| Deposit Date | Jun 8, 2022 |
| Journal | Contemporary Social Science |
| Print ISSN | 2158-2041 |
| Electronic ISSN | 2158-205X |
| Publisher | Routledge |
| Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 378-391 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1080/21582041.2018.1448943 |
| Keywords | Super ageing; Rural China; State support; Family interdependencies; Gender and ageing; Ethnographic studies |
| Public URL | https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/3664311 |
| Related Public URLs | https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/30453/ |
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