中国城市老龄友好型社区建设状况与优化策略

Construction status and the optimization strategy of aging-friendly communities in Chinese cities

对老龄友好型社区建设进行量化考察,不仅有利于增进社会共识,还有助于研判实施政策干预的优先次序和时机。本文基于人境匹配原则,借鉴世界卫生组织老龄友好指标体系,开发出一种信度效度良好的适用于我国城市老龄友好型社区的测量指标体系,并对城市老龄友好型社区建设进行量化考察。结果表明:城市老龄友好型社区建设距离最优状态尚有较大改善空间,且结构性短板突出。从老龄友好型社区评价指标维度来看,短板弱项最突出的是社会环境,其次是文化和物理环境;老龄友好型社区建设的区域不均衡性和城市异质性特征明显;区域不均衡性特征总体表现为“东部较高、西部居中、中部和东北塌陷”;城市异质性特征表现为城市人口规模越小,老龄友好型社区建设水平越低。针对短板弱项,建议优化老龄友好型社会环境和适老化的物理环境,营造尊老爱老敬老的文化环境;进一步加大对中部和东北地区以及中小城市老龄友好型社区建设的支持力度。

Due to the lack of evaluation systems and data,there are few quantitative evaluation studies on aging-friendly communities in China.The quantitative evaluation of an aging-friendly community can not only improve social consensus but also help decision-makers to judge the priority and timing of intervention.Based on the principle of Person-Environment(P-E)fitting,this paper provides a reliable and valid index system and carries out,by applying the index,a quantitative study of the aging-friendly communities in China’s cities.The index system includes core elements related to the survival and development of the elderly,which is consistent with the goals of“active aging”and“healthy aging”set by the central government,such as outdoor space,transportation,housing,living and health services,information exchange,skill upgrading and reemployment,social integration,and respect and comprehension for the elderly.Further,this paper uses the data from a national survey on elderly care and the aging population to probe into the overall construction,structural characteristics,and regional differences of the aging-friendly communities in China’s cities,thereafter putting forward suggestions for improvement.The measurement results show that there is still room for enhancement.Of all first-level indices in dimension,social support is the weakest,followed by cultural and physical ones.Among the indices of social support,skill upgrading and reemployment have the most room to improve,followed in turn by information exchange and living and health services;for cultural support,social integration is the weaker one,followed by respect and tolerance for the elderly;and for physical support,outdoor space is the weakest,followed by transportation and housing.In addition,the imbalance between regions as well as between cities is evident.Regional imbalance is characterized by“high in the east,medium in the west,and collapse in the middle and northeast”.Meanwhile,city imbalance is featured with“the smaller the population,the lower the level of aging-friendly communities”.On the one hand,this observation is in accordance with the fact that the elderly support system in small cities is backward and incomplete.On the other hand,it reflects that urban-scale benefit works in building aging-friendly communities,or in other words,an increase in population may improve the efficiency of the construction of aging-friendly communities.Based on the above observations,it is suggested that due attention be paid to the balance of aging-friendly communities.The government is advised to optimize the aging-friendly communities,such as improving social support systems and creating an aging-friendly environment for the elderly.And it is recommended to increase support in the central and northeast regions and small and medium-sized cities.With these precise reforms,both the quality of aging-friendly communities and the well-being of the elderly will be improved.