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Innov Aging
Innov Aging
innovateage
Innovation in Aging
2399-5300 Oxford University Press US 

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.1950
igaa057.1950
Abstracts
Session 5555 (Symposium)
AcademicSubjects/SOC02600
Family Changes and China’s Elderly Support System
Hu Zhan  Shen Ke  
Fudan University, Shanghai, China
2020 
16 12 2020 
16 12 2020 
4 Suppl 1 Program Abstracts from The GSA 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting “Turning 75: Why Age Matters”584 584
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.2020This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Abstract
Population aging has become the norm in China. Improving or reconstructing the elderly support system is therefore essential. While the government and institutional support has been improving and enhancing in China, family remains the most important source of elderly support for a long period in the future. Based on data from censuses and national surveys (1982-2015), we examine recent changes in household size and structure across ages from an individual life course perspective, to reveal the complexities and ambiguities behind the nationwide household change. Our findings suggest that multi-generational co-residence is a major vehicle to accommodate the needs of family members at critical stages of life. These salient features of family change in China call for new family-oriented policies, including pragmatic incentives to strengthen intergenerational solidarity, essential support for family caregivers, and diversified community services to care for frail elders.