Economic Development and Intergenerational Relations in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China

SBE 0527500Melvyn GoldsteinGeoff ChildsCase Western Reserve这项研究将有助于我们了解发展中国家农村老年人在现代化进程引起的快速社会经济变化的条件下如何处理家庭和代际支持网络的社会动态。该项目的重点是老年人护理仍然首先由直系亲属提供的社区，特别是将详细调查同一套发展力量如何以不同方式影响农村老年人，审查老年人作为行为者为实现确保家庭成员提供老年人护理的目标而采取的战略。核心假设是，老年人以及那些接近老年的人对这些变化的反应并不一致，而是对代际关系和老年护理制度采用不同的适应战略。了解这一过程的社会动态将加强现有的解释框架，说明发展中国家的农村老年人及其家庭如何应对迅速的社会经济变化。该项目将利用老年学、人口学和人类学的办法和方法所产生的数据，建立一个现代化和代际关系的动态模型，超越现代化是否对老年人产生负面影响的标准问题，从理论上更有活力地解释老年人如何不同地适应发展（在进程的任何阶段）所造成的变化。该项目采用自然实验研究设计，将研究中国西藏自治区的三个农村地区，这些地区的经济发展程度各不相同。这三个研究地点拥有相同的语言、文化、宗教和社会组织，不同之处仅在于它们所面临的发展转型。这种设计允许在发展的初期阶段、中期阶段和后期阶段对这一问题进行研究。 这项研究将促进美国和西藏学者之间的国际科学互动。它将有助于发展中国家和国际援助界就如何科普社会经济发展和人口结构变化对农村老年人及其家庭的影响进行重要的公共政策辩论，特别是有令人震惊的证据表明，传统上使老年人与家庭和代际亲属网络保持联系的家庭和经济纽带正在削弱。通过提高我们对农村老年人差异适应过程的理解，这项研究将有助于政策规划者更好地应对农村第三世界的全球老龄化。

SBE 0527500Melvyn GoldsteinGeoff ChildsCase Western ReserveThe study will contribute to our understanding of social dynamics underlying how the rural elderly in developing nations deal with family and intergenerational support networks under conditions of rapid socio-economic change induced by the process of modernization. The project focuses on communities where old-age care continues to be provided first and foremost by immediate family members and in particular, will investigate in detail how the same set of development forces impact rural elderly in different ways by examining the strategies that the elderly, as actors, undertake toward the goal of assuring old-age care from family members. The central hypothesis is that the elderly, as well as those who are approaching old age, do not respond homogeneously to these changes, but rather utilize different strategies of adaptation regarding intergenerational relations and old-age care systems. Understanding the social dynamics of this process will enhance existing explanatory frameworks on how rural elders and their families in the developing world deal with rapid socio-economic change. Utilizing data generated by the approaches and methods of gerontology, demography and anthropology, the project will construct a dynamic model of modernization and intergeneration relations that moves beyond the standard question of whether or not modernization negatively affects the elderly, to a more dynamic and theoretically heuristic explication of how the elderly differentially adapt to the changes wrought by development (at any stage of the process). The project employs a natural experimental research design that will study three rural areas in the Tibetan Autonomous Region in China, which differs with respect to the extent of economic development they have experienced. These three study sites possess the same language, culture, religion and social organization, and differ only in their exposure to the development transition. This design allows for research on this issue at an incipient stage of developmental, an intermediate stage, and a later stageBroader Impacts. The research will foster international scientific interaction between U.S. and Tibetan scholars. It will contribute to important public policy debates in the developing world and the international aid community about how to cope with the impact of socio-economic development and changes in population structure on the rural elderly and their families, in particular, the alarming evidence that the family and economic bonds that traditionally secured the elderly to families and intergenerational kin networks are weakening. By enhancing our understanding of the processes underlying how rural elderly differentially adapt, this research will assist provide policy planners to better deal with global aging in the rural third world.