Doctoral Dissertation Research: Institutionalized Eldercare in Contemporary China

Yale University, New Haven CT

Investigators

Abstract

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.