Aging & Social Change: Ninth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

Traditional norms in Asian societies of filial piety, including Japan and Vietnam, emphasize care roles of children upward their elderly parents. Caregiving is often responsibilities of women, who are increasingly migrating and participating in the labor market, leading to an increasing withdrawal of family caregivers from caregiving upward their parents. Though experiencing different stages of reforms and development, Japan and Vietnam share similarities and differentials in care patterns toward their elder population. Japan relies on the public long-term care insurance program in elder care. Japan is changing the balance of care towards home, community-based services, and marketization to provide alternative care options for their elderly population. Vietnam is enhancing institutional care in collaboration with local mass organizations and stakeholders. Community is playing key role in emotional support to the elder. Taking into account the Confucian-influenced traditional family structure, the responsibility for elderly care is still a family matter. Using a dataset from a collaboration survey among 450 elders between the Kumamoto Gakuen University in Japan and the Institute for Family and Gender Studies in Hanoi in 2017, the paper examines and analyzes roles, challenges, and difficulties of family, community, private and public social services, and policy in care provision to the elderly and gaps; to understand the processes of the reconstruction of those formal and informal sectors in order to bear the increasing care responsibilities, and the ways they provide care to elders and the linkages with policies and institutional in Japan and Vietnam, using care diamond model.