Doctoral Dissertation Research: Financial and Legal Planning of Elders

养老私有化大大加重了老年人的经济负担。由于没有足够的社会和家庭支持，许多老年人在规划晚年护理时求助于金融和法律工具。这篇博士论文研究了老年人在进行晚年规划时如何导航、参与和重塑金融和法律环境。除了支持人类学研究生在经验数据收集和分析方法方面的培训外，这项研究还为政府官员、老年法律从业人员、看护人员、社会工作者、老年学家和其他研究人员提供了有价值的信息，以了解老龄化经历如何与金融和法律网络交织在一起。这项研究的结果将有助于利益相关者和官员了解老年人如何制定战略，为老年人提供更负担得起的、包容的和公平的护理。通过在非学术场所传播本项目的研究结果，本研究将促进公众对晚年幸福的意义和全球人口老龄化所面临的挑战的理解。研究人员询问了群体社会政治经历对老年人对法律和金融机构的感知和参与有什么影响，以及当老年人与官方和非官方的法律和金融机构互动时，他们对制度权力和晚年幸福的理解是什么。研究方法包括参与观察、半结构化访谈、生活史和档案研究。在人种学上，研究人员将观察不同的老年人群体如何在不同的地点做出晚年财产安排和健康相关的决定，包括公证处、金融咨询公司、遗嘱登记中心和退休住宅。该项目不仅揭示了社会、金融和法律部门之间关系的多面性，这些关系影响着人们对老年护理的看法，而且揭示了法律、金融和亲属网络中根深蒂固的关于老年人的假设和信念。此外，它还对老年人如何通过日常实践重新配置和共同构建法律和金融环境产生了新的理解。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The privatization of eldercare has greatly aggravated the financial burden of elders. Without adequate social and familial support, many elders turn to financial and legal instruments as they plan for their late-life care. This doctoral dissertation research investigates how older adults navigate, engage with, and reshape financial and legal settings as they conduct late-life planning. In addition to supporting the training of a graduate student in anthropology in the methods of empirical data collection and analysis, this research yields valuable information for government officials, elder law practitioners, caretakers, social workers, gerontologists, and fellow researchers to understand how aging experiences are intertwined with financial and legal networks. The findings of this research will help stakeholders and officials understand how elders develop strategies to build more affordable, inclusive, and equitable care for older adults. By disseminating findings from this project in non-academic venues, this research will facilitate public understanding of the meaning of late-life well-being and challenges faced by expanding aging population globally. The researcher asks what impacts cohort sociopolitical experiences have on older adults’ perception and engagement with legal and financial institutions, and what kind of understandings of institutional power and late-life well-being emerge as elders interact with official and non-official legal and financial settings. The research methods consist of participant observation, semi-structured interviews, life histories, and archival research. Ethnographically, the researcher will observe how distinct cohorts of elders make late-life property arrangements and health-relevant decisions at various sites including notary offices, financial consultancy, will registration centers, and retirement residences. This project not only sheds light on the multifaceted nature of the relationship between social, financial, and legal sectors that shape perceptions of late-life care but also reveals the assumptions and beliefs about older adults ingrained within the legal, financial, and kinship networks. Moreover, it generates a novel understanding of how elders reconfigure and co-construct legal and financial settings through their daily practices.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.