Elderly Care in Foreign Countries
Elderly Care in Foreign Countries
When you think of growing old you think of spending time with family and friends, traveling and feeling financially secure to be able to retire. Unfortunately in today’s society the elderly is beginning to wonder if they will be able to retire, if social security will be available to them, if their families will be able to care for them or will some of them be forced to live in a retirement home. These hopes and fears are realized to all elderly people, weather they live in the United States or in other countries.
In the past, China has been focused on keeping their population under control and not focusing on their aging population. During the baby boom of the 1950’s, China made it so couples could only have one child per family to control the countries population growth, which in fact is coming back to hurt them now. With so many elders retiring and drawing social security, there are not enough workers paying into the social security system to keep up with the demand.
China has the largest population on elderly in the world with 120 million elders in their society and by 2050 China will have to deal with how they will be able to support over 400 million people over the age of 60. Traditionally in China, it is the oldest son’s responsibility to take care of the parents. The parents will live with the oldest son who provides them with everything they need finically and the other children are their to offer emotional support for the parents, but over the decades these roles have changed. Do to the fact that couples can only have one child per family and it is better to have a son to take care of you, couples give their daughters up for adoption in order to be able to keep their sons. This causes a problem because as of the twenty-first century there are more single middle-aged sons who are having to support their parents finically and emotionally all by themselves.
China has only a little over 136,000 community centers for the elderly to live in. The best way to handle this situation is for a family based support system and community services.
In Russia, the elderly population has gone up twenty-five percent in the last...