Who will care for our parents? Changing boundaries of family and public roles in providing care for the aged in urban China.

The combined effects of more and more elderly Chinese living in empty-nest households and into advanced age pose an unprecedented challenge to the traditional family care for the aged in China and raise concerns about how to provide long-term care for the needy elderly. It has been increasingly recognized that the traditional family-based support system alone is inadequate to cope with rapid social change and population aging in China and that there is an urgent need to explore and develop the role of extrafamilial involvement in meeting the needs of long-term carefor the Chinese elderly. This study used the interview data collected in 2001 in the city of Wuhan, and three other surveys on eldercare in Wuhan between 1998 and2005, to show what eldercare patterns have emerged to cope with the long-term care needs of the urban elderly. More specifically, it describes and discusses three new eldercare patterns: at-home eldercare (jujia yanglao), community-based eldercare (shequ yanglao), and institutional care (yanglao jigou yanglao).