A Study On The Social Support System For The Empty-nest Elderly In City

With the further degree of ageing population, the number of elderly population has been gradually increasing. Worse still, the miniaturization and centralization characters of modern families have caused that the number of empty-nest elderly has been raised rapidly. It is worth to be mentioned that the problems of the empty-nest elderly are becoming increasingly conspicuous. There are many differences between the empty-nest elderly of city and the rural empty-nest elderly, and there are many differences between the empty-nest elderly of city and the non-empty-nest elderly city of on social supports. So the focus of this paper is the empty-nest elderly in city on social supports, and how to improve the social support system of the empty-nest elderly in city.The research object of this paper is the empty-nest elderly in city, Shandong Province. In detail, the researcher mainly gets interview materials according to the questionnaire survey. Then the researcher instructs the basic situation of the interviewed elders. Afterwards, the researcher analyzes the reason why the phenomenon of empty-nest elderly exists. One reason is the elders choose it by themselves; another reason is the elders are forced to choose it. Because the children’s housings limit, the social mobility is too frequent, the elders have non-child or dead child, and the children wound not like to live with their parents. After that, the researcher focuses on investigating the existing situation of social support of the interviewed elders. According to the demand, the social support of empty-nest elderly can be divided into three parts: economic support, life support and emotion support. Then the researcher analyzes the problems of the three parts individually. First of all, they gain less economic support and have lower incomes. The support of the medical care is too weak. What’s more, the children and the service organizations can’t satisfy the requirements of the elders in daily care. Thirdly they often feel isolated and frustrated. And their spirit lives are grossly deficient. And the researcher summarizes the reasons about the problems of social support system of empty-nest elderly in city. There are many reasons, such as the defect of legislation, weaken nongovernmental organization, community service and traditional family, and poor consciousness of the elders themselves.At the end, according to the problems of the social support system of the empty-nest elder in city, the researcher puts forward some suggestions. Firstly, the financial support system should be perfected through related policies and setting up a fund about empty-nest elder. Secondly, we can make the services of elder better and build a good medical care to be satisfied the empty-nest elderly. Finally, people should enrich their culture life and often go home to make the empty-nest elderly become happy. In a word, the construction of social support system of the empty-nest elderly should be gradually improved by building the financial support, life care and emotional support system.