| Abstract: | Rural reforms have benefited certain groups and marginalized others, creating great disparity in rural China. The welfare situation of childless elderly men, mostly never married, remains little known and largely unnoticed. This study enquires preliminarily into the question of how childless elderly men cope with the changing economic, political, and institutional contexts brought about by the market reforms that started in 1978. With the adoption of a political economy approach to the analysis of welfare resources allocation, and an institutional approach to the analysis of changes in welfare institutions and individual lives, this paper looks into various roles of the state, community, and family in welfare production. The in-depth village study suggests that though the state, community, and family are expected to care for the needy, neither formal nor informal assistance from the community or extended families to the childless elderly is necessarily sufficient, automatic, or forthcoming. Collective land and housing plots seem to be the only resources that the childless elderly have to exchange for care. |
