Abstract
This article explores an emerging trend among young and middle-aged rural couples in Northeast China who have purchased recently marketized commercial insurance as a way to prepare for self-support in old age. It discusses how the commercial insurance industry has created a rural elder-care market among a population that traditionally relied on family for support in old age. It also delves into the ways in which the transformations of intergenerational exchange and family structure and a lack of health care access have contributed to the preparation for self-support in old age and have thus fostered the creation of a rural elder-care market for the insurance industry. This emerging trend reveals a transition from traditional family support to a combination of multiple ways of elder care, in particular self-support in old age. It also suggests that while the Chinese state is facing a pressing issue of supporting an increasing aging population and the Chinese family is coping with the burden of elder care, the insurance industry is playing an increasing role in elder care in China.
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Notes
The name of the village and the name of a villager are pseudonyms.
The insurance policies that some Lijia villagers purchased belonged to the category of health insurance that included a health care benefit to cover critical illness conditions. Because some of these insurance policies could serve as savings accounts, the policies were often promoted as a way to prepare for self-support in old age.
Among the 25 couples who bought one policy for the wife, four men held positions in the township government or the local middle school and enjoyed a retirement pension provided by the government, and three men had passed the age limit for enrollment.
Joining the cooperative medical system requires paying a small amount of money into a cooperative fund. The Chinese government offers partial financial support for this fund. An enrolled rural resident can claim money to partially cover medical treatments in designated hospitals.
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Acknowledgements
The article was previously presented at the annual meetings of the Population Association of America, the Association for Asian Studies, and the American Anthropological Association. I especially want to thank Rubie Watson for her valuable suggestions on an earlier draft. Research for this article was funded by a research grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and the Department of Anthropology at Tulane University.
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Shi, L. Preparing for an “Insured” Old Age: Insurance Purchase and Self-Support in Old Age in Rural China. J Cross Cult Gerontol 33, 183–195 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10823-018-9348-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10823-018-9348-6