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Although the Chinese nation is undergoing rapid modernisation and urbanisation, there remains widespread interest in some traditional familial arrangements and practices, particularly in the intergenerational context. This paper discusses the family relations of urban middle-aged citizens in present-day China.

This study employed the grounded theory method to investigate family relations among middle-aged citizens in urban China based on data obtained via semi-structured interviews with 34 participants. A grounded theory coding strategy was used for data analysis.

The analysis revealed evidence of a transformation towards downward solidarity, with decreasing intergenerational co-residency; that is, the traditional norm of adult children providing support to their older parents is rapidly losing popularity. However, middle-aged and older citizens continue to support their adult children by helping them purchase real estate and assisting with childcare activities.

The findings suggest the existence of intergenerational inequality. Policymakers should acknowledge this phenomenon and provide the younger generation with enough support to improve the wellbeing of the country's middle-aged and older population.

The transformation towards downward solidarity implies a new intergenerational relationship in contemporary China, in which many young people rely on financial and functional support from their older parents. Meanwhile, traditional norms continue to exist despite greater downward solidarity among the younger generation. In other words, old and new norms simultaneously exist.

This article analyses community care services (CCS) in terms of availability, awareness, accessibility, and acceptance (the Four A’s approach), untangles the deep-seated factors underlying the CCS and provides some short-term, medium-term, and long-term recommendations.

A literature review was conducted, including relevant government reports, consultation papers, Legislative Council papers and articles from academic journals from 1980 to the present.

The Four A’s approach shows that applicants to both centre-based services and home-based services endure lengthy waiting times because of the limited number of CCS. Furthermore, the awareness of day respite services is approximately 50 percent, which lags behind other CCS. Accessibility is contingent on a cross-district day respite service system and a lack of consistency between the quota and the proportion of older adults in the districts. Finally, the level of service provided by CCS is unsatisfactory due to inflexible service provision. Reviewing the brief history of long-term care services (LTC) reveals the deep-seated factors at the core of their heavy reliance on the subvention model, in contrast to the adoption of the ‘mixed economy of care’ by residential care services (RCS). An imbalance in budget allocation to RCS and CCS is also revealed.

Although the principle of ‘ageing in place’ was introduced in 1977, the institutionalisation rate (6.8 percent) of older adults remains unexpectedly high in Hong Kong, even surpassing its Asian counterparts, whereas the usage rate of CCS hovers around 0.8 percent. Thus, how to implement policy concerning LTC services for older adults must be re-evaluated.

This paper seeks to define a theoretical model for the urban regeneration of mass housing areas based on citizen initiative, self-management and self-financing in the form of the neighbourhood cooperative. This paper aims to identify mechanisms for economic resource generation that enable the improvement of the urban surroundings and its buildings without assuming disproportionate economic burdens by the local residents based on two principles, the economies of scale and service provision.

The research is structured in three phases: a literature review of the different trends in self-financing for urban regeneration and the conceptual framework for the definition of a cooperative model; the definition of theoretical model by analysing community ecosystem, neighbourhood-based services and the requirements for its economic equilibrium; and the discussion of the results and the conclusions.

The results show the potential of the cooperative model to generate a social economy capable of reducing costs and producing additional resources to finance the rehabilitation process. The findings show not only the extent of economic advantages but also multiple social, physical and environmental benefits. Its implementation involves the participation of multiple actors, which is one of its significant advantages.

The main contribution is to approach comprehensive urban rehabilitation from a collaborative understanding, overcoming the main financing difficulties of the current practices based on public subsidy policies. The model also allows an ethical relationship to be built with supplier companies by means of corporate social responsibility.

This paper theoretically and empirically analyzes the effects of the elderly’s physical health status on their need for care and the choice of care models in China.

Empirically, the estimation results of a large-sample randomized intervention trial with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients through the difference-in-difference method indicated the following: (1) After the COPD intervention trial, the physical health status of the elderly in the treatment group improved significantly, the need for care was substantially reduced and the health improvement led to a 35.5% reduction in the probability of using elderly care. (2) The reduction in the need for care regarding the treatment group occurred mainly in social care. The probability of using social care decreased by 67.8% due to the elderly’s health improvement, while that of home care remained unchanged generally. (3) Further heterogeneity tests suggested that families with fewer potential internal resources for caregiving had a more pronounced decline in the need for social care.

Theoretically, these empirical results support the existence of the “pecking order” theory in the family’s choice of elderly care model, that is, families tend to employ all internal resources for caregiving before resorting to social care, resulting in a higher sensitivity of social care to health.

The main policy implication of this paper is that ex ante preventive health intervention policies can significantly alleviate the burden of care, especially social care, on families. And preventive health intervention policies are particularly effective in reducing the burden of the families with relatively few resources for informal internal care.

This article aims to explore how Japanese women with younger children changed their commitment to the labour market between 2000 and 2019 by comparing mothers in three-generation and nuclear family households.

Japan currently has the highest ageing rate in the world at nearly 30%. Since the 1990s, employment flexibilization and women's labour market participation have proceeded in parallel, and the conservative family values of the patriarchy and gender division of labour that have provided intergenerational aid for care within households have been shrinking, by conducting a descriptive analysis of the Labour Force Survey (LFS).

This study identified that a conspicuous increase in part-time employment among mothers in both household types and a decrease by half in the working mother's population in three-generation households. These results suggest that the function of inter-generational assistance by multi-generation cohabitation, which was once thought to be effective in helping working mothers with younger children, is declining.

A study examining the transformation of mothers' employment behaviour differences between three-generation households and nuclear family households is rare. This paper makes a new contribution to the research regarding the grandparents' caregiving, household types and mothers' employment.