Abstract:

Since the beginning of this century, the percentage of single youth above the lawful marriage age and never-married persons has been rapidly increased in China. Factors such as young people’ reluctance to marry, the imbalance of sex ratio at birth since the middle of 1980s and infertility problems may lead to significant growth in the number of voluntarily ‘original elderly people without family’, involuntarily ‘original elderly people without family’ and ‘secondary elderly people without family’ in the future, which may exacerbate a negative effect on collective eldercare and individual eldercare. Therefore, the obligation of “the comprehensive management of the sex ratio at birth and its impact” of the Population Monitoring and Family Development Department of the National Health and Health Commission should be clearly defined, the system of “inter-ministerial joint conference on promoting family harmony and happiness” should be led by the National Health Commission as soon as possible. We also should actively guide young people in urban and rural areas to consider “age-appropriate marriage and childbearing” and encourage them to give birth to two or three children to relatively reduce from the source the proportion of “lonely elderly” in the gender and age groups of China’s elderly population in the future. At the same time, we should further study and implement the requirements of “optimizing the service for the elderly without family” proposed by the central government so as to achieve the high-quality promotion of the future construction of China’s basic eldercare system in urban and rural areas.

Key words: marriage, eldercare, elderly people without family, “optimizing the service for elderly people without family”