Old age support and intergenerational relations in urban China: Maintenance of obligations between older parents and children.

This dissertation is an empirical study of the pattern of old age support of service and economic types in contemporary urban China. The aim of the study is to describe the current pattern of intra-familial support, and, by examining the processes of intergenerational transfer of resources, to explain the mechanisms through which intergenerational relations are maintained and old age support actualized. A more general issue this study seeks to address is how, given the apparent decline of parental power and authority in urban China, the institution of intra-familial support has been maintained. The primary data used in this study are from the Survey on Aging and Intergenerational Relations in the Baoding city, Hebei province, China, carried out in the summer of 1994. Baoding is a mid-sized industrial city in the northern China. The survey was based on a multi-stage equal probability sampling design. The final sample consists of 1002 parent respondents (age 50 and older), and 753 adult children (age 18 or older) of these parents. The statistical tools used in the study include logistic regression and regression of limited dependent variables. The main findings are as follows. (1) Although there is still a lack of comprehensive social welfare system, the general well-being of the urban elderly, as compared with other age groups, does not seem to be particularly disadvantageous. (2) Parents' investment in and continued association with children increase, both in likelihood and in quantity, the support they receive from their grown children. (3) Given grown children's continued identification with their parental families, the act of old age support is prompted by the perceived needs of older parents, and constrained by children's own economic capacity. Hence, the transfer of resources between older parents and children is conducted in such a way that the resources possessed by elderly parents and grown children tend to be equalized. (4) Large number of children has a positive effect on support older parents receive from children; and providing old age support appears to be a shared responsibility among siblings. (5) Daughters have become as supportive to their parents as sons.PhDGerontologyIndividual and family studiesSocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/129958/2/9711937.pd