Research On The Support To Rural Elderly In The Suburbs Of Big Cities During The Urbanization Process

The rapid development of urbanization and aging has posed a significant challenge to China nowadays. during the process of big cities’spreading out, the support to the rural elderly in the suburbs of big cities has to face double challenges of urbanization and aging. Hence, the paper focuses on the support to them with a case study of Tianjin. Using the theory of social transformation, urban-rural integration, citizenization and active aging, the paper aims at analyzing the support to the rural elderly in the suburbs of big cities during the urbanization process, on the aspect of financial, medical, life-care and spiritual-comfort support. In other words, the paper proceeds the research on the issue whether urbanization widen the resources of the support to the rural elderly in the suburb of big cities and how it changes the support from individual, family, community(village collective) and government. On the basis of the analysis above, the paper presents conclusions as follows:Firstly, the financial and medical support to the rural elderly in the suburbs of big cities has been improved greatly during the urbanization process. In accordance with the significant increase on the value of the land, peasants in the suburbs of big cities received much more financial benefit from the land, which improves the support to the rural elderly in the suburbs of big cities from the individual, family and village collective. Meanwhile, by the constructions of new towns, the public service facilities in these areas are more adequate than the traditional rural areas, which provide the rural elderly more accessible, affordable and timely medical care.Secondly, the ratio of support from the government in the whole support to the rural elderly in the suburbs of big cities decreases during the urbanization process. Although the support from the government has been improved during the urbanization process, it’s less than that of the individual, family and village collective. Under the duality structure of city and urban security system, the rural elderly in the suburbs of big cities do not have the same security support as the citizens. Hence, the support to them is still unstable and unsustainable.Thirdly, the life care and spiritual comfort support to the rural elderly in the suburbs of big cities has not changed much during the urbanization process. The attention of life care and spiritual comfort support to the rural elderly is less that of finance and medical care, the former has changed little as a result. The daily care of rural elderly in the suburbs of big cities is still mainly supported by the elderly themselves, while their spiritual life is single boring and has less community participation. However, subjective well-being is not as low as expected, which also to some extent proves that the rural elderly have paid much attention to their financial and medical support than that of the life care and spiritual comfort.Lastly, the support to the rural elderly in the suburbs of big cities still has tight relationship with land, during the urbanization process, the land transfer does not isolate the land support to the rural elderly. On the contrary, the elderly in the suburbs of big cities has got more support from land by village collective dividends with the significantly increase of the land value. Moreover, by the significantly increase of support from village collective, the structure of financial support of the elderly has changed. The financial support from village collective has become second support, thus elderly has more tight relationship with land on the financial support.Considering the conclusions above, the paper constructs a new multi-support system to the rural elderly in the suburbs of big cities and presents policy suggestions.