Doctoral Dissertation Research: Institutionalized Eldercare in Contemporary China

耶鲁大学博士生Rose Keimig在Marcia Inhorn博士的指导下，将调查老年人，家庭和照顾者如何在当代中国协商新形式的制度化养老。20世纪世纪几十年的改革，特别是20世纪70年代末的独生子女政策，导致了今天中国人口结构的严重失衡。这些不平衡反过来又刺激了在孝道规范和医疗保健服务私有化的背景下对住宿护理设施需求的增加。该项目是第一个使用民族志研究方法来研究中国老年机构化的经验如何通过多元化的医疗体系，不断变化的道德世界，不断变化的人口统计和新的市场驱动的养老机会来介导的项目之一。 拟议中的研究将在中国西南部云南的省会昆明进行。 使用社会科学的方法相结合，包括参与观察和采访工作人员，居民，和家庭的制度化和非制度化的老人，这项研究的目的是显示人们是如何应对日常挑战的新形式的老年人护理。广泛的研究方法和信息提供者将提供一个丰富的帐户如何更广泛的主题，生物医学化，亲属关系和城市化映射到当代中国的老龄化经验。 此外，本研究超越了现有的人口统计学和统计学，试图揭示在当代中国，通过将老年亲属从私人家庭转移到机构，家庭如何促进了新形式的机构养老和新的养老方式、孝顺子女和照顾者的出现。本研究不仅在中国，而且在地球仪上都具有广泛的社会意义。 通过展示老龄化是如何经历的，如何做出决定，以及如何在机构环境中重新制定家庭责任，该项目将阐明政策干预领域，使中国，美国，中国和美国未来的照顾者，老年人和家庭更容易实现人口转变。和在世界各地.

Yale University doctoral student Rose Keimig, under the guidance of Dr. Marcia Inhorn, will investigate how elders, families, and caregivers are negotiating new forms of institutionalized eldercare in contemporary China. Decades of reforms during the twentieth century, and especially the one-child policy of the late 1970s, have given rise to stark demographic imbalances in China today. These imbalances have, in turn, stimulated an increase in demand for residential care facilities against a backdrop of filial piety norms and the privatization of health care services. The proposed project is one of the first to use ethnographic research methods to study how experiences with elderly institutionalization in China are mediated by pluralistic medical systems, changing moral worlds, shifting demographics, and new market-driven caregiving opportunities. The proposed research will be conducted in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province in southwestern China. Using a combination of social science methods, including participant observation and interviews with staff, residents, and families of institutionalized and non-institutionalized elders, this study aims to show how people are grappling with the everyday challenges of new forms of eldercare. The wide range of research methods and informants will provide a rich account of how the broader themes of biomedicalization, kinship, and urbanization map onto the aging experience in contemporary China. Furthermore, by going beyond the existing demographics and statistics, this research seeks to uncover how, by moving aging relatives out of private homes and into institutions, families are facilitating the emergence of new forms of institutional caregiving and new ways of being an elderly person, a filial child, and a caregiver in contemporary China.This research has broad social relevance, not just in China but across the globe. By showing how aging is experienced, how caregiving decisions are made, and how family responsibilities are reworked in institutional settings, this project will illuminate areas for policy interventions that will make demographic transitions easier for future caregivers, elders, and families in China, the U.S., and around the world.