Household composition of the elderly in two rural villages in the People's Republic of China

Abstract

This paper reports on the household composition of a sample of elderly residing in two villages in Zhejiang Province, China, one that is prospering under the post 1978 economic reforms and another that is not. It reveals that while a large proportion of the elderly in both the study villages are part of single generation households, the two villages differ with respect to the composition of the single generation household category. In the prosperous village, 50% of the elderly are living alone or with a spouse and 6% are living "by turns" (rotating between son's residences). In the less prosperous village, 26% are living alone or with a spouse while 22% participate in "by turns" arrangements. The paper suggests that a failure to separate analytically the "by turns" arrangements obscures the extent to which China's rural elderly now live in economic units separate from their offspring and masks important aspects of the differential impact of the new economic reforms on the household situation of the elderly in different villages.