The Study On The Government's Responsibility For The Construction Of The Socialized Old-age Urban Service System

Our country is facing an accelerated population aging problem when entering into 21 Century. Until the end of 2008, over 159,890 thousand people, or 12.0% people in China are above 60. Based on the United Nations'prediction, China is and will still be the country whose old population is the largest during the first half of twentieth century. With the increasing pressure of the aging problems and its impact on our economic and social development, the problems of the deficiency of social security system, the government's heavier financial burden and the weakening family care are becoming striking, especially the conflict between the growing demand and the short supply of the service of the aged. To establish the old-age urban service system is one of the most effective ways to deal with the problems. The socialized old-age urban service system includes various modes of caring for the aged, different service levels and multiple service subjects, with family and society to play different roles. Since it belongs to the public product, the government plays the leading role and takes on the heavy responsibility.Under this circumstance, Changchun city, as the case in this thesis, has its own characteristics. Later than the average national level of entering the aging society but with a fast speed, Changchun, during the process of constructing the old-age urban service system as the old industrial bases in Northeast China and the less developed regions, is facing the problems of limited local public finance, heavy burden of the elder security, the inadequate investment of social service, the backward development of the aged industry. It is important to strengthen the government's responsibility to solve the problems. As this thesis discusses, to clearly define the responsibilities of government during the construction of the old-age social service system will increase the funds of government's invest, promote the growth of the resources of the aged service, transform the concept of the aged caring, create new methods of the services, and then will promote the development of the old-age urban service system with Changchun's characteristics. First, this thesis discusses the research background and its significance. Second, it defines related concepts, theoretical foundation and policy basis. Then it analyzes the current situation of the government's responsibility for the old-aged urban service in Changchun and probe into the problems. In conclusion, based on clearly defined role of the government, it provides other more developed national cities'experiences and systematically states the government's responsibilities in the construction of the old-aged service system in Changchun city.Chapter One introduces the background of the choice item, analyzing the aging status in China and in Changchun, the problems and situation of the construction and development of the old-age social service system, and then states the significance of the study, clearly defines the government's responsibility in the construction, which can promote the old-aged social service system's development in Changchun and can exploit its potentialities of stimulating domestic demand and is also the need to promote the social harmony, and at last illustrates the state of domestic research of the government's responsibility on the elder supported home service and private agencies.Chapter Two focuses on the related concepts and the research foundation. The related concepts include the socialized old-aged service system, the elder supported home service, agencies service and government's responsibility. The research foundation consists of theoretical foundation and policy basis. Theoretical foundation includes the theory of public product, new public service and social security—state intervention. The policy basis is the regulations and rules of the development of the socialized old-aged urban service issued by the nation, Jilin province and Changchun city.Chapter Three analyzes the current situation of the government's responsibility for the old-aged urban service in Changchun. First, the investment of the security is inadequate and embodied in mainly two ways: for the fund procurement, the government's input is not enough and lacks the sense of responsibility of the multiple means of fund procurement; for the policy, the policy making is untimely and imperfect. Second, the resource supply is unbalanced: the difference between the state-run and the private old-aged institutions in obtaining the government's resource. Third, the old-aged care lacks unified, standardized supervision mechanism, and the problems exist in service quality, service reputation and standardizing development of the institutions, especially in the private old-aged institutions.Chapter Four analyzes the government's responsibility for the construction of the socialized old-age urban service system in the more developed cities as Shanghai, Guangzhou and Qingdao. Though there are gaps between the economic level and governments'financial strength, the experiences still provide useful reference in the socialized old-age urban service system in Changchun.Chapter Five provides the theoretical construction of the government responsibility for the socialized old-age urban service system. According to the current situation of the government's responsibility in the construction and development of the socialized old-aged service system and the economic condition in Changchun, consulting the experiences of the more developed national cites, the thesis clearly defines the position of the government as a planer, regulator, guarantee and supervisor, based on which to establish the government's responsibility system: to set the framework of the socialized old-aged service system and developing goal, to ensure disadvantaged elderly groups to enjoy the service fairly, to provide and to reintegrate the resource of the old-aged service system and to supervise and to manage the standardizing regulation of it.