Matching and Coordination among Elderly Services, Aging, and Economy in China

Under the background of China getting old before getting rich, the elderly service, as a public project, should be coordinated with the degree of aging and economic level to avoid the improper allocation of public resources. This article aims to investigate whether an insufficient or overthreshold phenomenon exists in China. Firstly, based on the “active aging theory,” the elderly service index is constructed, and then matching and coordination models are proposed to obtain coordination degrees among aging, the elderly service, and the economy. In terms of coordination, elderly service-aging is at a low level and elderly service-economic level shows an agglomeration of high in the east and low in the west, while the elderly service-aging-economic level is quite different among provinces. In provinces with high coordination (e.g., Beijing and Guangdong), the elderly services are appropriate. In comparison, in provinces with low coordination, the elderly services may either lag behind the aging degree (e.g., Sichuan) or exceed the local economic level (e.g., Shannxi). Therefore, the development of aging services should focus on coordination rather than quantification and scale. Considering the regional heterogeneity, we can formulate soft constraints allowing a lower minimum limit and greater flexibility range.