The Impact of Home and Community Based Care and Services on Chinese Older Adults: Based on Intergenerational Support From Offspring

This study aims to investigate the impact of Home and Community Based Care and Services (HCBCS) on intergenerational support from offspring, specifically examining whether HCBCS acts as a substitute or supplement. Using four waves of data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), we employ the difference-in-differences (DID) method, along with Logit, Oprobit, and OLS models. The findings show that HCBCS boosts economic support from offspring to older adults but reduces emotional and caregiving support, indicating HCBCS has both supplementary and substitutive effects. Also, the results emphasize that the effects of HCBCS are more prominent in households with multiple offspring and urban areas. These findings have important implications for HCBCS program design, providing insights into how such services can better complement and substitute family-based intergenerational support and offering valuable evidence for policymakers to assess and enhance the effectiveness of public elderly care services.