Aging & Society: Eighth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

With more than forty million disabled older people, long term care (LTC) provision has become one of the most critical social issues facing governments in China. Although great endeavours have been made, accessible and affordable LTC remains one of the biggest challenges. Increased government responsibility is expected to improve LTC provision. However, the response by local government has varied considerably. In particular, policy responses are not consistent with identified LTC needs and fiscal capability across local areas. This contradiction is best illustrated within Beijing and Shanghai, the most influential local areas in China. The fundamental differences between two areas reside in three aspects: the level of LTC within the rights protection framework for older people, the entitlement to LTC benefits as the basic public services, and the LTC finance mechanism. Due to the experiment-based policy-making approach in China, either the LTC provision model in Beijing and Shanghai could be adopted as national policy. Therefore, it is worth an in-depth study on the policy responses to LTC provision in two local areas. As preliminary research result, this paper introduces contradictory policy responses to LTC provision from two local areas. Further research examines how and why different and contradictory policy responses have occurred in Beijing and Shanghai despite great similarities in material factors. More importantly, this research intends to improve the knowledge of social policy-making towards social justice, equity, and equality in China.