The Association of Caregivers’ Socio-Economic Conditions with Family Caregiving Norms: Evidence from China

Abstract

Similar to her neighboring country, Japan, China faces significant difficulties in providing long-term care to the elderly. Female household members who traditionally provided necessary caregiving are no longer available as much as in the past due to the demographic and socioeconomic changes over the past few decades. Against this backdrop, we investigated how socioeconomic factors affect the perception of family caregiving norms in China, using an international comparative household dataset that allowed us to compare China with Japan, the latter being extensively investigated. We used ordered probit regression to estimate the model equation. Our results show that rural residency, household assets, and government dependency are positively associated with the perception of care. A notable difference from the Japanese results is that rural residents have a rather positive perception of family caregiving norms. Furthermore, urban–rural subsample analyses revealed that women in rural areas perceive caregiving negatively.

Keywords

• eldercare in China
• family caregiving norms
• caregivers’ socio-economic conditions
• aging population