| The population aging problem has become a worldwide issue currently.China emerged as an aged society in 1999 and the number of elderly population increased rapidly in recent years.Consequently,the aging problem has appeared as the core population in China.This issue has significant implications to our society and will definitely impose substantial influence on families and the society.The Home-based care service for aged people is a pension model as compared to the traditional asylum for the aged.In this model,governments and the society provide free,subsidized or charged services through communities,including livingcare,health-care,spiritual comfort and other services to the elders who live in their family.The Home-based care service for the aged combines the advantages of the traditional family supporting and institutional care systems and acts as an effective supplement to these systems.It is also an important content of developing community services and continuously improving socialized system for the aged in China.Indeed,as quasi-public goods,establishment and operation of the home-based care service for the aged people means that the government should play a leading role in this process.Therefore,research on governmental behaviors in urban home-based care service for the aged people has significant importance to not only improving living standards of the aged,but also providing references for exploring innovative ways in social management and establishing service governments.Firstly,from the perspective of diversified development of demand for and supply of home-based services,the thesis categorized home-based services into basic,middle and high levels according to the public,welfare and private features of the services.Then the thesis analyzed government behaviors in the three service levels.The research indicates that the homebased care services at the basic level can only be provided by the government through direct production and supply.This is a way of using income redistribution to ensure social equity and satisfy the elderly's basic aged-care needs.Middle level home-based care services are mixtures of public goods and private services.Services at this level can be produced and provided by the government indirectly,that is,the government can cooperate with NGOs and enterprises.Then former can authorize the latter or purchase home-based care services from the latter to provide free or subsided living-care,health-care,spiritual comfort and other services to the aged.Highlevel home-based care services have more private attributes and the provision of which should largely be achieved through the market.In other words,the market produces and provides services and the government only regulates and supervises the market at the macro level.There are some government behavior problems in the operation of home-based care service system in urban China.These include,firstly,there is a lack of investment and support in the establishment of basic level home-based care service system.The government does not act adequately in providing services and managing the system,as well as promoting development of NGOs in this area.Secondly,the rights and responsibilities of governments and other governing subjects are not clear,resulting in unharmonious cooperative relationship between the government and other governing subjects.The major reasons for these problems are the lower level of the economy and society,the "path dependence" feature of the governmental behaviors,the “profit-maximizing motivation” of the government,the “limited rationality” of the government and some defects in the legal system,and so on.The thesis,taking advanced experiences of social caring for the aged in other foreign cities,proposed a path to optimize government behavior in home-based care service on the basis of the theory of good governance and the concept of meta-governance.Governance theory emphasizes the governance of multiple subjects,like government failures and market failures,governance may also fail.The theory of good governance is the derivation of governance theory,which is derived from the theory of governance and higher than the theory of governance.What the good governance pursues is the maximization of public interest.It is the collaborative cogovernance of government,enterprise organizations,non-governmental organizations,communities and elderly families in the situation of supply and demand of urban home-based care service.Meta-governance refers to the guidance and control of the decentralized governance process under the recognition of the collaborative co-governance model,that is,it recognizes both authorization and decentralization,while at the same time recognizing the necessity of more powerful government control [1],emphasizing the key role of the state or government in the supervision,control and coordination of governance.Therefore,government meta-governance is a strategic choice to optimize government behavior under the supply and demand situation of urban home-based care service.By perfecting the legal system for homebased care service and by reforming the insurance system,institutional guarantees can be established to the standardized management of urban home-based care service.The increase of government financial support can provide financial guarantees to urban home-base care service.The integration of social endowment resources can help to realize the sharing of old-age pension service.In addition,a database construction can provide modern technique to strengthen the urban home-based care service.Taking the development of home care service in Urumqi as an example,the thesis,using latent class analysis(LCA)method,analyzed the potential categories of home-based care service in Urumqi,and divided them into “medical care demand”,“comprehensive demand” and “no demand" three potential categories.Based on the differences in demographics,economic environment,family environment and self-rated health of the elderly,multiple Logistic regression analysis was used to study the influencing factors of the classification results.It is found that with the increase of age and the weakening of physical function,the demands of the elderly for home-based care service are basically showed from “no demand” to “medical care demand” and then to “comprehensive demand”.In response to the above situation,the Urumqi Municipal Government and civil affairs department explored and promoted the “9073”pension model.But the overall situation is,the home-based care service which possesses 90% in old-age service system develops relatively slow.Therefore,the Urumqi Municipal Government should clarify the leadership responsibilities in promoting home-based care service,and develop home-based care from the aspects of strengthening awareness,improving the policy guarantee system,and building a regulatory and evaluation system. |
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