From "Welfare As Almsgiving" To "Protection Of Rights": The Research On Government’s Accountability On Providing Of Services-for-the-Elderly In Shanghai

With the increasing process of Aging, China has been thought as "Being aged but not wealthy". As the first Aged city in China, Shanghai has been inundated with elderly, and an increasing number of whom are in short of necessary support. Used to be one of the necessary stage of one’s life, "Living out one’s life in old" has transferred into a serious social problem in nowadays. The shortage of Services-for-the-Elderly has turn out to be one of the core problems in the contemporary society. In response, Shanghai has published policy to allow the parents who has neither brother nor sister to give birth to a second child, and has being planning to encourage the old getting their life support by Reverse Mortgage. However those kinds of measures could never divert people’s attention from the real accountability of Government on providing Services-for-the-Elderly, for Government was born to be the safe-guarder of public interests and provider of public services.From a long time of participant observation and non-structured interview which are supported by documents analyses, the researcher noticed that the Government’s accountability on providing Services-for-the-Elderly has been obviously strengthened; the object of Government’s accountability has been expanded to all the elderly from some limited disadvantaged elderly; the goal of Government’s accountability has been promoted to supporting colorful life from providing aids for surviving; the constraints on Government’s accountability has transferred to formal policy or law from moral consciousness. All those changes could be summarized as that Government’s accountability on providing of Services-for-the-Elderly in Shanghai has been transferred from "Welfare as Almsgiving" to "Protection of Rights".The transformation of Government’s accountability on providing of Services-for-the-Elderly from "Welfare as Almsgiving" to "Protection of Rights" is driven by the transformation of attributes of Services-for-the-Elderly which is shown as follows:Firstly, the requirement of Services-for-the-Elderly is not a service requirement within a family any longer; Secondly, the demander of Government’s providing of Services-for-the-Elderly is no-longer limited as those elderly without family but has expanded to all the elderly; Thirdly, people doesn’t take it as a charity pray any longer, but show it as a claim for civil rights when ask Government to providing Services-for-the-Elderly.It’s the family support for the elderly that lead Government to take the accountability on providing Services-for-the-Elderly as "Welfare as Almsgiving", which means Government just provide limited services for those elderly without family after some kind of qualification process. With the knowledge that "Family is the granted support for the elderly", the limited services provided by Government is taken as gift both by Government and the Society.Government take the accountability on providing Services-for-the-Elderly as "Protection of Rights" is the result of the following transformations:Firstly, the object of Government’s accountability has been expanded to all the elderly from some limited disadvantaged elderly; Secondly, the goal of Government’s accountability has been promoted to supporting colorful life from providing aids for surviving; Thirdly, the constraints on Government’s accountability has transferred to formal policy or law from moral consciousness. In Shanghai, in order to improve the providing of Services-for-the-Elderly, Government organized the providing of services as a special Government Project and established a special Leading Group to take charge in providing of services. In fact, Government has successfully encouraged multiple producers (such as family, NGO and business) to provide services to elderly.Though the transformation of Government’s accountability on providing of Services-for-the-Elderly from "Welfare as Almsgiving" to "Protection of Rights" is truly driven by the pressure caused by the increasing social demand for Services-for-the-Elderly, it’s only after the pressure caused by the increasing social demand for services has been successfully converted to Government’s internal motive than could it lead Government to improving the responsive performances in providing Services-for-the-Elderly. Whether the pressure caused by the increasing social demand for services could be successfully converted to Government’s internal motive is definitely depends on the intrinsic motivation of Government. It’s the fact that providing of Services-for-the-Elderly meets the most important intrinsic motivation of Government, namely, the pursuit of legitimacy, which drives government to strengthen the accountability on providing Services-for-the-Elderly. In order to achieve legitimacy, Government’s providing of Services-for-the-Elderly is practically motivated by the drive force from both Performance Evaluation and "Model building" at one hand, and acted as top-to-down target transfer and task assignment at another hand.