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This article studies the Ming-Qing period (1368–1911), examining the differences in the poverty risks of Chinese women in various social positions after their husbands or fathers had died based on historical records and archives. We argue that women's poverty risks depended not only on their family's wealth but also on their social positions, which regulated their eligibility for various income sources such as dowry, family property, and assistance from their lineage or the government. Unlike most studies, we focus on the combination of various income sources for which women were eligible, via which they evaded poverty to different degrees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How much, and in what ways, do cultural ideas contribute to understanding cross‐national differences in the extent of long‐term care (LTC) policy marketisation? We argue that differences in cultural ideas in the political sphere about 'ideal' ways of organising the provision of care shed light on these differences, relatively independently of the governing parties' positions on the left/right spectrum. Our comparative case study of two conservative welfare states, Germany and Austria, supports this argument. LTC policy marketisation in the mid‐1990s was, in both cases, based on left‐libertarian ideas. While these ideas gained strong political support from parties across the left/right spectrum in Austria, they were combined with etatist ideas in Germany, resulting in a substantially lower potential for marketisation in Germany's LTC policy. Our study also shows that, by contrast with neo‐liberal ideas, left‐libertarian ideas address care recipients' self‐determination and divert attention away from social problems associated with LTC marketisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid demographic ageing constitutes a significant challenge for the Chinese social system. As China has only recently begun developing a long‐term care (LTC) policy, care provision is currently based on family care. However, the prevalence of such care is declining due to low social recognition and conflicts between family members' care and work responsibilities. Thus, a comprehensive LTC policy should expand extra‐familial care services and make family care attractive. Germany's LTC insurance is an example of a policy that integrates extra‐familial and family care. This study analyses whether China's LTC policy can gain insights from Germany's LTC policy in view of the findings from Chinese LTC pilot projects. We argue that a policy that supports extra‐familial and family care would facilitate the LTC provision preferred by older people, while also supporting relatives who wish to provide care according to their values of intergenerational solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to demographic ageing, many welfare states have restructured their long‐term care (LTC) policies by simultaneously extending older people's social rights to publicly‐funded care and strengthening their active role in handling their care situation. By doing so, they are increasingly constructing older people as active social citizens. However, the consequences of this shift for older people's social risks are controversial and whether it comes at the cost of public responsibility for ensuring sufficient care provision. Therefore, this study investigates to what extent European welfare states differ in terms of how they conceptualise older people as active social citizens in their LTC policies and how these differences affect older people's social risks. It introduces an innovative typology to classify LTC policies with respect to different approaches towards active social citizenship and related social risks. It applies this approach to a cross‐national comparison of five European countries using data on LTC policy regulations, comparative policy databases and secondary literature. The findings indicate that European LTC policies promote active social citizenship to different degrees and that we have to consider whether strengthening older people's active role coexists with generous social rights to publicly‐funded care in order to understand the consequences for their social risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how far the concepts of de-familialisation/familialisation are adequate to the classification of long-term care (LTC) policies for older people. In the theoretical debate over LTC policies, de-familialising and familialising policies are often treated as opposites. We propose re-conceptualising the relation between de-familialisation and familialisation, arguing that they represent substantially different types of policy that, in theory, can vary relatively autonomously. In order to evaluate this theoretical assumption, this article investigates the relation between the generosity level of LTC policies on extra-familial care, and the generosity level of LTC policies on paid family care, introducing a new multi-dimensional approach to measuring the generosity of LTC policy for older persons. It also explores the consequences of this for gender equality. The empirical study is based on a cross-national comparison of LTC policies in five European welfare states which show significant differences in their welfare state tradition. Data used are from document analysis of care policy law, the Mutual Information System on Social Protection, the European Quality of Life Survey and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The findings support the argument that de-familialising and familialising LTC policies can vary relatively independently of each other in theory. It turns out that we get a better understanding of the relationship between LTC policy and gender equality if we analyse the role of different combinations of extra-familial and familial LTC policies for gender equality. The paper brings new insights into the ways welfare states act in regard to their LTC policies. It helps to clarify how the concept of de-familialisation/familialisation can be understood, and what this means for the relationship between LTC policies and gender equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]