Based on the dual perspective of family care needs and family care providers

First, the question raised: How to effectively respond to China's demographic transition with social policy transformation

At present, China's population transformation is continuing, and the population is approaching the stage of stopping the growth of its size, and entering a more drastic and profound age structure change, and the main contradiction of population is changing from total pressure to structural challenges. Among them, population aging caused by the increase in the median age of the population is a major demographic structural challenge facing China. According to the data released in the Statistical Bulletin of the National Economic and Social Development of the People's Republic of China in 2021, the proportion of the population aged 65 and above will reach 14.2% in 2021, marking that China has officially entered the "aging society" from the "aging society", and the aging population is facing an increasingly severe situation. The whole field of economic operation, all links of social construction, many aspects of society and culture, as well as the comprehensive strength of the country and international competitiveness will be more directly and strongly affected.

In fact, population aging is one of the most prominent development realities that China has faced since entering the 21st century, and it will run through the whole process of building a socialist modern country. At the time of China's completion of the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects and the realization of the first centenary goal on schedule, the population cohort formed by the first birth peak period (1950-1958) after the founding of New China has entered the age period. By 2035, when the modernization goal is basically achieved, the population cohort formed by China's second birth peak period (1962-1975) will gradually enter the old age. Around the time of building China into a modern socialist country by 2050, the population cohort formed by China's third birth peak period (1981-1994) will gradually enter the old age. Therefore, in the process of building a socialist modern country in an all-round way, China must establish and improve institutional arrangements and policy reserves to actively cope with population aging.

However, structural imbalances in China's current social policy system make it difficult to respond to the long-term challenges of the "aging population" transition. One is the imbalance between income maintenance/cash security and social services/service security. Income risk protection for the elderly (mainly pensions) accounts for a considerable part of China's social security expenditure, while family support policies to ease the burden of family care and improve the quality of life of the elderly generally adopt the policy thinking of social assistance, focusing only on low-income groups and maintaining at a low level. The imbalance of policy project design makes the goal function of social policy unbalance. The relatively perfect income risk protection policy enables individuals to maintain a certain standard of living no longer relying on family and employment units, which leads to the weakening of incentives for marriage and childbearing behaviors of some groups: because they do not need to rely on family and children to obtain income risk protection, many people will choose not to marry or marry late, and give birth late, less or no children. At the same time, the average family actually cannot get effective support from social policies for elderly care, illness and disability care, and when the cost of caring for the elderly is fully borne by the family, most families may have to choose to have fewer children, or reduce the actual quality of life of the elderly. Such structural imbalances and their exacerbation do not help to effectively regulate marriage and childbearing incentives for individuals, nor can they address the challenges of an aging population in the long run.

The second is the imbalance between family care service needs and family care service providers. In the limited practice of family support policies for long-term care of the elderly and in the current family support policy discussion, the quality of life of the elderly is regarded as the sole policy focus, while the second group of target groups of family support policies - family care service providers are ignored. On the one hand, many family support policies generally adhere to the policy idea of social assistance, which is later than the provision of inclusive social services to ordinary families, and in fact, the responsibility of caring for the elderly is family-oriented. In China's current practice of family gender division of labor, the domesticalization of care responsibilities often leads to the feminization of family care services. This will have a negative impact on the employment and social security rights of female family members. On the other hand, in public social service policy discussions and local innovations such as long-term care insurance, benefits are mainly paid to the elderly, but support for family care service providers, especially women (spouses, daughters-in-law, etc.) who provide care services is neglected. This unbalanced treatment and payment strategy leads to the female labor force being unable to fully engage in market-oriented and paid work due to the need to take care of their families. One of the long-term effects of an ageing population is a reduction in the effective supply of Labour. How family support policies can help women balance work and family in order to increase women's effective labor force participation and cope with the long-term crisis in labor supply is becoming increasingly important.