The Research On Public Risk And Governmental Responsibility In The Old-age Service System

Severe population aging will continue until this century ends in China.We need to establish a comprehensive Old-age Service System to respond to the population aging.Although China has initially established an Old-age Service System at this stage,there are still many factors both in theoretical research and in practice that hinder its further improvement.This paper attempts to explore the government how to solve a series of problems in the Old-age Service System and better deal with the risk of population aging.The government plays a leading role in building the Old-age Service System.Studying the establishment and improvement of the Old-age Service System is actually mainly to study how the government fulfills its responsibilities.The study of Public product(service)in Western economics is numerous,but this paper believes that using “the public risk theory” to analysis the government’s responsibility in the construction of the Old-age Service System may be a new way outside the public product theory and welfare economics.It can help us discern the government’s responsibility for the provision of public goods in a better way,because we have been in the “risk society”.This paper firstly reviews the public risk theory in detail to lay a theoretical foundation for the analysis of public risks in the Old-age Service System.On the basis of summing up and learning from previous studies,this paper further extracts this conclusion: Public risk determines government’s responsibility.Minimizing public risk is the government’s greatest responsibility.Government is the ultimate bearer of public risk.In turn,any of government’s behaviors will also affect public risks,that is,the government’s effectiveness can prevent public risks,and any lack,misplacement and offside of government’s responsibility will expose and exacerbate public risks.Through the research,this paper believes that public risks exist in the Old-age Service System.According to different sources of risk,the public risks in the Old-age Service System can be divided into two levels with progressive relationship.This article calls the first level of public risk in the Old-age Service System as “native risk”.The generation and development of native risks can’t be avoided in the process of social developing and it has it’s certain historical roots.On the basis of detailed analysis,This paper uses the “positive identification method” to identify the specific performance of public risks.For the second level of public risk in the Old-age Service System,this article refers to the “secondary risk”.According to the public risk theory,the secondary risk in the Old-age Service System is caused by the absence and offside of government functions.Through qualitative research,this paper finds: First,in the current Old-age Service System,the risk sharing mechanism between individuals,families,enterprises,society and government needs to be improved,especially the messy functional boundaries of the government,excessive family risk burden and “weakness” of market forces should be changed.Second,the division of internal powers of government departments is unreasonable,which mainly reflected by the misplacement and excessive dispersion of government functions.Through the empirical case analysis of the four provinces(cities),this paper believes that the aged care service presents the characteristics of unbalanced development in the eastern,central and western regions.Through the comparative analysis of the urban and rural Old-age Service in Beijing,we find that the urban-rural difference of the Old-age Service is significant.Then we draw the conclusion that the government neglect it’s duty to equally provide basic old-age service.Finally,this paper takes the “Fiscal Expenditure Matrix” as the basic framework,and makes a rough estimate and forecast of the financial expenditure of the Old-age Service System in 2025,which intuitively reflects the heavy responsibility of government expenditure and the risk of shortage of fiscal expenditure.The natural function of the government is to minimize public risks,and the government is the ultimate bearer of public risks.Based on this basic understanding of government responsibility,this paper believes that for the public risks that appear in the Old-age Service System,the government should prevent and resolve the situation through institutional changes,and bear the final risk by financial expenditure.On this basis,this paper proposes a series of specific policy recommendations.In addition,this paper also analyzes the Japanese Old-age Service System and the public risk management system in the United States,which will play a certain enlightenment on the construction of China’s old-age service system.