Support network of the landless rural elderly in Post-reform China: Case Study in Jiangsu Province

Abstract

Focus on the context of post-reform China that is facing the pressure of population aging under the process of massive social transformation, the study aims to exam the support network of the landless rural elderly in Jiangsu, a leading eastern coastal province of China. Through examining it from two different perspectives based on the fieldwork data: that of the elders and that of their adult children, I seek to achieve sociological and demographic understanding of the old-age support of the landless elderly and their well-being under the Chinese characteristic urbanization and modernization. Study targets in the study have some unique features: as the landless elders, they have experienced several stages of rural change during their lifetime: small holder family farm before 1950, collective farm pre-1978, de-collective household contract responsibility after 1978, and landless in the later years; but they were connected with the soil for the greater part of their life. Different from rural-urban migration, the studied adult children experience in situ occupational transition, which provides me an opportunity to examine the short-distance interaction between the aged parents and their adult children.