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SUPPORT NETWORK OF THE LANDLESS RURAL ELDERLY IN POST-REFORM CHINA: CASE STUDY IN JIANGSU PROVINCE ZHOU WEI (Master of Sociology) A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF Ph.D. OF SOCIOLOGY DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2010 Acknowledgements First, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the department of Sociology and Asia Research Institution at the National University of Singapore who awarded me a research scholarship between 2005 and 2009. And I am enormously grateful for the patient guide and continuous support of my supervisor, Professor Gavin W. Jones, in my Ph.D. study. He was always helpful and gave advice, taught me how to put forward questions and structure my ideas logically, and encouraged me to focus the study upon the landless rural elderly. I would also like to thank the other three advisers who were my thesis committee members for their useful suggestions: A/P Angelique Chan, Dr. Richel Safman, and A/P Paulin Straughan. Thanks also to Dr Mika Toyota who gave me an opportunity to join the reading group of “Aging, Care and Globalization”, and discuss with experts in aging research. I also wish to thank Professor Chua Beng Huat and A/P Eric Thompson, Professor Bryan Tuner, A/P Ho Kong Chong, A/P Sinha Vineeta, Dr. Richel Safman, Professor Gavin W. Jones, for teaching me the courses ‘graduate research seminar’, ‘sociological theory and globalization’, ‘survey management & research methods’, ‘sociology of everyday life’, ‘qualitative data analysis’, and ‘independent study’ respectively. The administrative staff in the sociology department and in the Asia Research Institution, and technical support staff of the FASS, especially Ms Rajah, Ms Cecilia Sham, Ms Cheivi and Mr. Seow, were a great help. A special thank goes to my two former students from the Nanjing Normal University, Ms Chen Juan and Tang Jing, and their families who helped to locate in the fieldwork sites and fulfill it well. Let me also say “thank you” to all the people that have helped me to undertake the study. Last, I thank my family, for their endless love and inspiration. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgments ii Abstract iii List of Maps v List of Illustrations vi List of Tables viii Chapter I: Introduction: the Rural Elderly and Their Lives 1 Chapter II: Landless Rural Villages and the Elderly 21 Chapter III: Research Design: from Abstract to Detail 53 Chapter VI: Two Landless Rural Villages and Basic Information on the Elderly in 78 Post-Reform China Chapter V: Functional Dimension of Support Network: The Elderly’s Perspective 111 Chapter VI: Structural Dimension of Support Network: The Elderly’s Perspective 135 Chapter VII: Support Network of the Elderly: Children’s Perspective 177 Chapter VIII: Support Network of the Landless Elderly: Discussion and Conclusion 219 Bibliography 249 Appendix A: Old Age Support Questionnaire for the Younger Generation 266 iii Summary 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. The thesis is organized in eight chapters. Chapter One provides an overview of the thesis, discussing why I concentrated on landless rural villages in post-reform China, and why support networks of the landless rural elderly was chosen as the study topic. A brief study background of the landless elderly and their families, local villages and the broad society is also provided. Then the methodological issue is summarized: what kind of village is studied, what research approaches are used, and some perplexities in the study are addressed. Chapter Two is concerned with the social context of the study and the related literature is also discussed. The aim is to draw the outline of the changing context of rural China and family in the traditional past and post-reform context. Three dimensions as the landless rural village, family and individual’s life are emphasized. Related literature on Chinese family and generational relationship, social theory of aging, recent research on the elderly support are also presented. At the end of the chapter, I put forward the general study hypothesis: the iv support networks of the rural elderly in China have been changing due to modernization and urbanization. The detailed methodological issue and theoretical structure of the thesis are discussed in the following chapter. Study approaches, specific methods, study sites selection, detailed fieldwork plan, conceptualization and operationalization, fieldwork strategies and data analysis method are explained. Chapter Four provides the details of the two fieldwork villages: San Guanqiao and Qian Luoyang, and two ways of being landless are analyzed. General demographic information of the senior residents, such as different age cohorts, marriage and education, in the study sites is also provided. Based on the fieldwork data, the support network of the elderly from both the elderly’s perspective and adult children’s perspective are analyzed from Chapter Five to Seven. The premise of these three chapters is that the rural elderly and the younger generation have different life experiences, which affect the different behavior and motivation, interaction patterns. It causes the different understanding /formulate support network of the older generation. In the last chapter—Chapter Eight, discussion and conclusions are presented. I compare the result from the elderly’s and children’s perspectives to understand the expectation and obligation of the support system between two generations; try to demystify Confucian filial piety in contemporary China. And conclude that support networks of the landless elderly in post-reform China are changing but still keep some elements of tradition. v List of Maps Map 3.1 The location of Jiangsu Province 63 Map 3.2 Study sites in Rural Jiangsu 67 Map 4.1 A Sketch Map of San Guanqiao and Its Surrounding Area 80 Map 4.2 A sketch Map of Qian Luoyang and Its Surrounding Area 89 vi List of Tables Table 2.1 Percentage of Employed Persons by Three Industries 22 Table 2.2 Health Condition of the Elderly in China in Percentage (2005) 34 Table 2.3 Household Size in Chinese National Censuses 35 Table 2.4 Household Size by City, Town and County in China (2005) 35 Table 2.5 Family Structure by Percentage in 2005 36 Table 3.1 Annual Per Capital Income of Urban and Rural Households (Yan) 63 Table 3.2 The Elderly (60+) of the Nation and Jiangsu Province (%) 64 Table 4.1 General Demographic Information of San Guan and San Guanqiao 79 Table 4.2 General Demographic Information of Luo Yang and Qian Luyang 88 Table 4.3 The Interviewed Elderly in the Villages by Age Group and Gender 106 Table 4.4 Marital Status of the Elderly by Gender and Age Group 107 Table 4.5 Percentage Distribution of the Elderly by Educational Level 110 Table 5.1 Resources the Elderly Receive from Different Sources 113 Table 5.2 Annual Cash Income Level of the Elderly Per Person (Yuan) 120 Table 5.3 Main Income Source of the Elderly in the Villages (Number) 121 Table 5.4 Religious Belief of the Elderly in Villages by Gender 129 Table 6.1 Living Arrangement of the Elderly in the Villages 136 Table 6.2 Family Facilities of the Elderly in the Villages by Living Arrangement 144 Table 6.3 Number of Living Children of the Elderly 147 Table 6.4 Number of Living Sons of the Elderly 147 Table 6.5 Number of Living Daughters of the Elderly by Gender and Age Groups 148 Table 6.6 The Death of Adult child in the Villages 159 Table 7.1 Descriptive Characteristics of the Survey Respondents in 188 the Two Villages Table 7.2 Descriptive Characteristics of the Survey Respondents’ Elderly Parents 190 Table 7.3 Family and Living Arrangement of the Survey Respondents 193 Table 7.4 Living Arrangements of the Respondents’ Elderly Parents (%) 194 vii Table 7.5 Geographic Proximity between Elderly Parents and 195 the Survey Respondents (%) Table 7.6 Frequency of the Respondents’ Visiting the Elderly Parents (%) 196 Table 7.7 Intergenerational and Intra-generational Relationship 197 Table 7.8 Upward Resources Flow Providing by the Survey Respondents (%) 198 Table 7.9 Living Arrangement of the Elderly Parents and the Possibility for the 200 Survey Responds to Provide Kinds of Resources (%) Table 7.10 Percentage of Survey Respondents Able to Provide Various Kinds of 201 Resources to their Parents, According to Occupation of Respondents (%) Table 7.11 Downward Resource Flow Providing by Survey Respondents’ 203 Elderly Parents