Village senior en Chine.
© Pengli WANG
The adaptation of housing for the elderly in China:
Contrasted experience in Hangzhou and Zhengzhou
Pengli WANG (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne / Géographie-cités) will defend her doctoral thesis in geography entitled “Adapting housing to old age in China: the contrasting experiences of Hangzhou and Zhengzhou”, under the supervision of Natacha AVELINE – DUBACH (thesis supervisor, CNRS Research Director in Urban Geography), on
14 December 2023
14h00
Institute of Geography
191 rue Saint Jacques
75005 Paris
Members of the jury
Isabelle Attané, directrice de recherche à l’INED, Rapporteuse
Natacha Aveline – Dubach, directrice de recherche CNRS en Géographie urbaine, Directrice
Guillaume Giroir, professeur à l’université d’Orléans, Rapporteur
Dominique Argout, maître de conférence en sciences de l’éducation, l’université Paris-Est Créteil, Examinateur
Sophie Buhnik, enseignante-chercheuse en urbanisme à l’École Supérieure des Professions immobilières, Examinatrice
Summary
The accelerated aging of the Chinese population, a consequence of the “one-child policy” and China’s rapid economic development, has prompted the government to deeply transform its welfare system. These transformations affect all aspects of social action related to aging: pensions, health insurance, long-term care insurance, and housing. This thesis explores the government’s efforts at all institutional levels to adapt long-term care and housing supply to a society grappling with the decline of Confucian familialism.
Locating at the intersection of the geography of aging and geographical gerontology, this thesis particularly examines the production of yanglaoyuan (nursing homes and retirement homes) and policies for adapting existing housing to the elderly. It draws on the case of two metropolitan areas with similar demographic size but differing economic maturity: Hangzhou, a prosperous coastal city, and Zhengzhou, an inland city in the midst of development.
The theoretical framework connects debates on the characterization of social protection regimes to the literature on housing policies and asset-based welfare. The empirical contribution is substantial, based on surveys of 70 public and private stakeholders and an ethnographic analysis of 50 residential projects.
The results highlight a strong emphasis on aging in place within a home ownership- oriented doctrine, with the goal of providing 90% of residential options with minor local variations. Municipalities oversee the requalification of existing buildings and, as part of urban renewal projects, establish a dense network of community-based services for basic elderly assistance, in coordination with local hospital infrastructure. These initiatives are made possible by the significant public assets inherited from the socialist era, which can be repurposed, and more generally by the continued state ownership of land. This advantage also allows local governments to disengage from the operation of public yanglaoyuan by attracting private operators through the provision of free or low- cost public facilities. Everywhere, this “asset-light” business model is promoted to develop a wide supply of non-profit yanglaoyuan.
However, support for this type of housing also involves public subsidies, leading to significant regional inequalities in long-term housing supply based on the financial capacity of local authorities. Even when subsidies are substantial, as in Hangzhou, they are insufficient to significantly reduce housing costs and ensure adequate quality of care, rendering the supply of yanglaoyuan inadequate in terms of medicalization and pricing. These dynamics contribute to reinforcing social and spatial stratification in the living conditions of the elderly, driven by differences in financial capacity of local governments as well as households due to notable disparities in pension amounts based on former employers.
