The Analysisi On The Types And The Cause Of Rural Elderly Poverty

From the perspective of sociology, based on the qualitative investigation of a village,the paper discusses the background, types, formation, and the cause of rural elderly poverty. As a elderly of a family and a village, their poverty occurs in a special social background, one is the family structure of China, and the other is the acquaintance society of the village. The paper has a basic view that the rural elderly poverty occurs in the background of social transformation, and the reasons are non-individual. The paper analyzes the living situation of the general elderly from the aspects of family structure,livelihood patterns of a family, intergenerational responsibility between parents and their descendants, the acquisition of pension resources, leisure life of general elderly, and folk belief of general elderly. Then the paper concludes that the factors of family structure and village value have a vital influence on the life quality of the elderly. According to the three levels of meanings of human behavior, namely, subsistence level, social level and mental level, the paper clarifies three types of rural elderly poverty, those are economic poverty, social poverty, and mental poverty. From the two perspectives of family structure and village value, the paper examines the vital factors in the formation of rural elderly poverty. Firstly, the factors of family structure are the vital the vital power in the formation of the economic poverty. To have sons and to help a son to marry a wife are the life tasks of farmers that they must fulfill. Therefor the farmers in the lower class of a village may spend all their savings. In the family structure of the passing down of intergenerational resources, the elderly usually could not get resource feedback from their children, then they easily fall into poverty. At the same time, in the economic cooperation of a family, whether the worker labor or the farming labor are missing, the economic situation of a family will be affected, which will affect the living of the elderly. Secondly,the changes of village value are the vital factors in the formation of the social poverty,which means that young people present values relaxation.That result in the looking down of elderly both in the aspects of family and village. The changes of village values are mainly embodied in three aspects, namely, the crisis of the village public culture, the changes of intergeneration relationship, and the alienation tendency of favor contact.Those result in the social poverty of rural elderly together. Thirdly, the traditional idea of the rural elderly is the vital factor in the formation of mental poverty, which manifests that rural elderly have deeply rooted values about having a son to carry on his family name. And those traditional values are embedded into the mental world of the elderly. In this domination of meaning world, those elderly who do not have a son will be lifetime lonely, and become the loser in the meaning of culture. There are different levels among three kinds of elderly poverty, and the elderly in different kinds have different poverty levels. Rural elderly poverty is a systemic issue which needs long-term policy adjustments and joint efforts of individual, family, society, and government.