Elderly Welfare Policy In The Comparative Study - The Government And The Private Sector Burden-sharing

This thesis reviews and studies about the development and reformation of elderly welfare services in China and Japan, especially from a viewpoint of public and private partnerships. Using the theories of social welfare and taking Dalian as an example, we compare and analyze the roles of every sector in elderly welfare policies.Firstly, we discuss the process of birth and development of the whole social welfare policies, and analyze the structures and features of them. We can find out an important change in elderly welfare from private sectors to public ones and recently public-private partnerships have been increasingly combined together. So reviewing the dispute on public-private partnerships is a theoretical basis of this thesis.Secondly, we review the birth and changes of Japan's elderly welfare and analyze the changes of the roles of public and private sectors in elderly welfare. We can see public sector playing an authoritarian role in Japan. Under its system private sectors depend on public ones excessively. As a result, its financial burden has become huge. At the same time, it prevents private communities from standing on their own feet.The third chapter reviews the process of reform of China's elderly welfare from the period of planned economy to the period of economic reform and open-doors policy. We find that there are problems in public-private partnerships in China's elderly welfare policies. The mode and institutions that manage resources have not been adequate. The relationship of public and private sectors is unsuitable for China.The fourth chapter reviews and analyzes the example of Dalian Minquan community. Compared with Japan's similar policies, we can see that China's community elderly welfare services are in a stage of test. Compared with Japanese home-care welfare system, there are many problems in China; financial problems, lack of systems for training of specialized staffs, and problems in ways of providing welfare services. Public sectors have a little duty. Therefore there are a lot of issues to be modified on.Finally, through comparing China's elderly welfare with Japan's one, we point out that the starting point and process of development were different. In Japan the weight of policies has been shifted from public sectors to private ones. In China since the "unit welfare" of the period of planned economy was disintegrated, the duty of elderly welfare has been committed to society, and we have to treat it in mixed ways. For developing further, both countries are facing several similar issues; (1) they emphasize on reducing direct public sector's duty in elderly welfare and encourage private sectors to run elderly welfare services so as to improve the quality of welfare services; (2) they stress on the influence of communities in elderly welfare services.Summing up several basic structures of changes and development of public-private partnerships in elderly welfare policies, in order to satisfy the gradually expanding demand for elderly welfare, we must reconstruct "new regional communities", in which public-private sectors are going hand in hand. But when we observe present Chinese communities, we can get some implication; we must make relationships between public sectors and private sectors clear and take them into close partnerships.