Aged Care in Emerging Asia: New Demands, Evolving Responses, and Future Directions
摘要
The confluence of rapid demographic transitions, economic imperatives, and shifting social norms gives real urgency to Asia’s efforts to develop formal aged care systems as a complement to informal care. This chapter provides an overview of evolving aged care systems across selected emerging countries in East, Southeast, and South Asia (China, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, and Sri Lanka), looking at commonalities and differences, challenges, and issues for the future. While informal care dominates and formal systems remain nascent across developing Asia, emerging experience offers insights for further development of the sector. While there is no single “right” model of aged care across these countries, they face common challenges, including ensuring complementarity between informal care and formal systems, equity of access, promoting horizontal and vertical institutional coordination, achieving adequate but sustainable public financing, and defining the appropriate roles of the state, market providers, communities, and households. Aligning aged care with healthcare, social security, labor market, and fiscal policies will also be needed to promote policy and service delivery coherence.