In 19 years, the post-80s generation will retire, and it’s time to consider retirement.
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account “Micro Story” (ID: xianweigushi).
In 19 years, the post-80s will retire, do you think about how to provide for the elderly?
There are old people at the top, young people at the bottom, coupled with the one-child policy, this generation of post-80s has often begun to face the problem of how to support the parents of both husband and wife.
On the other hand, the problem of aging and declining birthrate has intensified. In this generation, the post-80s and even the post-90s, some people will even have no offspring to support them.
Data shows that as of 2018, the single adult population in my country reached 240 million, of which 77 million were living alone, and the number of young people aged 20-39 living alone was close to 20 million. It is estimated that by 2021, there will be more than 92 million living alone. Adult population.
Living alone is becoming a way of life, and because of this, when this generation of young people start to think about how to support their parents, they are also thinking about the old-age issues for themselves after early retirement.
The elderly care industry has become a veritable sunrise industry.
“Foresight Economist” has compiled a panoramic view of domestic elderly care real estate, which shows that many insurance institutions and real estate developers have targeted this sunrise industry successively and carried out product layouts such as nursing homes and retirement apartments:< /p>
(Image source: Forward-looking Economist)
As of the end of 2018, the proportion of people over the age of 60 in China accounted for approximately 249 million people, 17.9% of the total population, and the population over the age of 65 accounted for 11.9% of the total population.
But as of the end of last year, the number of elderly care service beds registered in my country was only 7.61 million, and there were only 34,000 elderly care institutions.
This means that most elderly people cannot occupy a bed in a nursing home.
The elderly who enter the nursing home may not be at ease. According to data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs, as of 2020, there are more than 2 million elderly people living in about 40,000 nursing homes across the country, of which only 370,000 staff members, and only 200,000 nursing staff.
The job of a caregiver is a 24-hour service. On average, a caregiver has to serve nearly 10 elderly people, many of whom are disabled or demented. The salary of nursing staff is mostly no more than 5,000 yuan per month. The workload is huge and it is difficult to take care of every old man.people.
This issue of microscopy stories tells the relevant personnel in the elderly care industry, among them:
Some people have overcome all difficulties to fight for a bed in a nursing home for their parents, but they have encountered their parents’ incomprehension, accusations of unfilial piety, and negligence of caregivers;
Some people enter nursing homes as nursing staff as soon as they graduate, in order to find a stable job, but they always question why they want to be a “senior nanny” and feel that they are wasting their youth;
Some people have tried to open a nursing home by themselves, but encountered many difficulties. In the end, they assessed that elderly care is just an industry that “seems to have a market, but can’t make a cent” and gave up;
Some people live in nursing homes because women cannot take care of themselves abroad, which also allows him to see the life styles of nursing homes and the chain of contempt by the elderly.
In their narrative, we pieced together the last stop of many old people’s lives-long and hopeless waiting and consumption.
This also makes us think early, this generation of young people are busy in 996 all day long, how can they exchange a happy old age for themselves and their parents? What can we do in advance?
The following true stories about them:
Text | Yang Jia, Tangshan
Edit | Zoran
Find all kinds of relationships and send parents to nursing homes
“Dad said, leave me here and I will die”
Zheng Xuxin 55-year-old government worker Hubei
Fifteen years ago, our three sisters forced their parents to be sent to nursing homes.
This proposal was fiercely opposed by my father, “Only unfilial daughters will send us”, but we have to send it.
They have been in bed with diplegia for more than 10 years and need the care of two nanny all year round.
Because of being trapped in the room for many years, the parents will inevitably become irritable and weird, and scold a lot of nanny away.
That year, the father who had cerebral infarction had other complications. He often encountered the situation of being sent to the hospital by ambulance in the middle of the night, and the doctors advised us to send it to a special institution for care.
We also took turns to take care of, but faced with the pressure of work and raising children, we had no time to stay in front of our parents’ bed.
The nursing home is undoubtedly the best solution.
There are two public nursing homesOne is welfare in nature and is aimed at the “five guarantees for the elderly” (such elderly people generally have no children and lack the ability to work); the conditions will not be too good.
The other is a publicly-run semi-profit nursing home, but it requires a large amount of hospitalization and nursing expenses. The accommodation is a two-person room, and there is a dedicated caregiver management, and everyone’s dietary precautions will be recorded. .
There are not many semi-profit nursing homes,
Thousands of dollars a month cost, and the number of beds is tight, but you need to find a relationship.
When I first sent my parents there, my parents would cry to us every night on the phone, saying that the nurses beat them and lost their temper, and said
“We have money, if we stay here, we will die”.
At that time, I received a call and felt uneasy. I often cried late at night, and after several tug-of-wars, I calmed my parents.
We visit our parents every week. This is also a time for comparison in nursing homes, which means “someone is worried about the family”. It is even more dignified if the family is full of excitement.
If no one is visiting, no matter how rich he is, he is a “poor man.”
I remember that there was an old man in his 70s, with brand names all over his body. He often took a picture to show people around him, showing off: This is my child, now in the United States. When he quarreled with others later, another old man said to him loudly,
“You have the ability to let the children come and see you! You can’t go back during the Chinese New Year, what are you arrogant?”
The nursing home is also a place where life and death are habitual. If there is a bed, it often means “someone is gone”, and there is an unwritten rule:
When the elderly are about to fail, they have to contact their children and relatives to take them away at many nights, and don’t die in the nursing home.
So at that time I was particularly afraid of the phone ringing in the early morning, which often meant life and death.
In 2011, the nursing home called and said that my father was dead. We rushed to the nursing home overnight and met our father for the last time. Within a year, our mother was also taking care of the elderly.The hospital passed away.
Our three sisters supported each other to finish the funeral. Although we were sad, we also felt relieved.
At that time, the only daughter who was in the third year of high school was very sad and cried and said,
“My mom is an orphan, she has no mom or dad anymore.”
I don’t dare to think about how she will deal with middle-aged people in the future, and the rising period of her career comes at a time when the family needs to take care of it.
So, I told her: If one day, I am old, you can send me to a nursing home; then, just choose a better nursing home for me.
Graduated from college and became a “senior nanny”
“The nursing workers in the nursing home have no sense of accomplishment, and are sending people away every day”
Xiao Ai, nursing home care worker, 23 years old
I am majoring in nursing.
When we graduated, the teacher persuaded us to enter a nursing home, saying that elderly care is a sunrise industry, and those with a medical background will be more popular in the future, so I came.
The nursing home I work in is a “public-built and privately-run” model, which is also one of the mainstream forms of nursing homes in China, that is, the government has paid for the construction of private companies to operate and is responsible for its own profits and losses.
However, the overall pricing of nursing homes is not high. If you want to be profitable, you must increase the occupancy rate and reduce labor costs.
Our nursing home arranges 6 caregivers on each floor to take care of 40 elderly people, and many of them are demented and unable to take care of themselves.
The things I do the most every day are to distribute medicine, check their physical signs, wash their faces and clean their bodies, like a senior nanny.
In nursing homes, care workers generally need to work in two shifts to ensure that there are people every day, but we are often too busy to eat.
The most tiring thing for me every day is the delivery of medicines. Some old people will imagine that this is “poison”, and they will beat people when they are excited.
The night shift is mainly to patrol to see if there are any elderly people who have sudden illnesses at night. Every room is checked almost every 2 hours.
Every time after the night shift, my whole body is like falling apart, and my psychological pressure is also great.
For example, many people say that carers are very aggressive towards the elderly. But in fact, most of the old people’s ears are hard to hear. We just want them to hear clearly so that the speech will be louder. In the eyes of family members, this is “abusive” to the elderly.
The old man himself has a strange temper, and his mind is sensitive. There was a grandmother in her 70s who liked me very much, and she said she wanted to introduce someone to me.
But once I was busy with work, and she became angry without listening to her chattering. When she saw me the next day, she told me to “get out”.
This is a job that has no sense of accomplishment and is “giving people away” every day.
This also leads to a lot of mobility of caregivers. Young people who have a way out will find ways to leave, and older aunts will try their best to change jobs to be a babysitter or confinement.
However, as long as you can survive the hard work, young people are promoted very quickly.
In this industry, deans in their 30s are also very common.
But before becoming the dean, most people have to go through the process of serving the elderly for several years (handling shit, urine, and feeding).
Now I am more confused. I feel like a senior nanny and want to jump out of the industry, but I don’t know where I can go.
If you don’t work hard now, you can’t even live in a nursing home
“If you have to go to a nursing home when you are old, why do you have to have children?”
Xiao Wu, 26-year-old nursing home volunteer
I am a volunteer in a nursing home. During the time I worked in a nursing home, I had only one thought, “If I don’t work hard now, I will not be able to support it in the future.”
Our counterpart nursing home is located in a suburban scenic spot, about 60 kilometers away from the urban area. It integrates health care and retirement, vacation and tourism.
There are 500 beds, 99 employees, and four types of elderly who are self-care, half-care, full-care, and special care are enrolled.
When I went to a nursing home for the first time, this nursing home overturned my imagination. All of them are apartment-style accommodations, one for two people, an artificial lake is dug in the activity area, a lake pavilion, a rockery, and a small auditorium and canteen are built.
As student volunteers, we don’t need to help the elderly with bathing and nursing, but to help nurses clean the room and talk to the elderly.
Soon, we discovered that there are also various chains of contempt in nursing homes:
1. Retirement salary (Or pension), look down on those who don’t have a pension and need money from their children;
2. Those who have been literate and read, look down on those who have no culture; or those who use smart phones, look down on those who use elderly phones;
There are also many other chains of contempt, such as-those who are in good health and can take care of themselves, look down on those who need half-care (mainly for the elderly with dementia), full-care and special care; children who come often, look down on children who can’t come back when they are out of town. Of…
So what kind of old man can stand at the top of the chain of contempt?
I have summarized, 60-70 years old, able to take care of themselves, hobbies, and pensions, they are simply kings here.
If the spouse is widowed or divorced, there will be many enthusiastic people in the hospital bringing them together for a “sunset red”, and there will even be a lot of “admiration” of the opposite sex.
But no matter where the old man is in the chain of contempt,
Loneliness and longing for family affection are their common characteristics.
Although most of the old people say “live in and don’t trouble their children” and “want to live their own lives”, whenever they chat with me, I can clearly feel their loneliness.
Every time we go, the old people will treat us as their grandchildren, take out snacks to share with us, take out the latest saved family photos to share with us family fun…
It was also that experience that made me confused:
If I have to live in a nursing home after giving birth, why should I marry and have children? If I live alone in a nursing home, how can I spend the rest of my life?
Don’t invest in nursing homes lightly
“Tired and unpleasant, I want to make money or do something else”
Wang Bin is 47 years old in Jilin
I almost invested in a nursing home.
In 2014, my relative returned from Canada with some spare money and wanted to invest. At that time, the State Council just issued a document to the effect that it welcomes private capital to invest in elderly care services.I feel a little moved.
China’s aging situation is relatively severe. Today, the population over 60 years old accounts for 18.1% of the total population.
According to the general situation abroad, 5% of the elderly will go to nursing homes, which is more than 12.7 million people, but currently there are only 8.075 million elderly care beds in the country. In 2014, the country seemed to have only more than 6.1 million elderly care beds, which was just over 50% of actual demand.
In addition, the level of domestic elderly care services was relatively low at that time, and many nursing homes provided one bed and three meals.
I once visited a hospice hospital where 16 elderly people were crowded in a room. Some old people have a weird temper and are prone to accidents when crowded together.
In nursing homes, there are still a lot of old people fighting.
So I took my relatives around in Changping, Haidian, Miyun, Tongzhou and other places in Beijing.
The land price in Haidian is too expensive to rent; people in Changping are unwilling to rent, and feel that the nursing home is “the first stop of the crematorium”, which is unlucky; the infrastructure of Miyun is not very good, and the initial investment is too much.
Finally, my relatives took a fancy to the land in Tongzhou, which is more than 10 kilometers away from the town. The transportation is convenient. The disadvantage is that it is relatively small, about 20 acres.
But later, I didn’t approve of relatives running nursing homes.
He believes that domestic nursing homes can make money through private retirement apartments and licensed care, just like Canada, but this is not in line with national conditions.
The Canadian pension generally adopts the PPP model (the government places orders and the company undertakes services), but this domestic system has just started, and the subsidy amount given by the state is not large, which can help to relieve the pressure of operation.
In addition, the procedures for operating private nursing homes are cumbersome and require various certificates, such as renovation permits, fire protection certificates, structural safety certificates, environmental assessment certificates, and food quarantine certificates.
If the receiving elderly cannot take care of themselves, the nursing home must apply for a medical license and medical insurance designation qualification.
Even if all of these are doneNow, are there any old people willing to live in? Are they really willing to pay such a high fee?
Furthermore, if an elderly person has an accident in a nursing home, who is to blame? I persuaded my relatives: Don’t look at the tens of thousands of yuan you can collect for an elderly person a year. If something goes wrong and a legal dispute arises, you will have to pay millions.
In addition, domestic labor is not cheap, a caregiver is about 5,000 yuan a month, taking care of 7-8 elderly people,
It is difficult to ensure that every elderly care is in place.
Carers who take care of the elderly need physical strength, and most of them are young people. Most of them haven’t done much farm work. They grew up holding their mobile phones and are very impatient with the elderly.
When I visited nursing homes, it was common for nurses to scold or even beat the elderly.
At that time, it was popular that “the elderly mortgage their real estate to pay for the nursing home”, and my relatives wanted to try it too.
I persuaded him that the old man’s real estate is not entirely up to him. His children have long been eyeing it, and this will cause him trouble.
Sure enough, several big news broke out soon. Some old people agreed, but children disagreed, so they had to go to court; some were simply scams. Later, there seemed to be regulations that did not allow this.
In 2016, my relatives returned to Canada, but in the end they failed to build a nursing home.
In the past few years, the nursing homes for the elderly have developed rapidly. The beds they can provide have accounted for 50% of the total beds, but the real profit is only 10%. Even if you make money, it is a meager profit. I have seen a statistic,
It takes 5-8 years to recover the cost of the nursing home for the elderly.
On the one hand, the cost of nursing homes is very high, with an average investment of 100,000 yuan per bed; on the other hand, there are also some institutional embarrassments. Whether it is a public welfare institution or a commercial institution is rather vague.
If the fee is high, it will definitely be scolded, but the fee is low and it is difficult to maintain.
However, now the income of the elderly has increased. I have read a report and said that by 2050, the consumption potential of the elderly in China will reach 106 trillion, accounting for 33% of GDP, but now it only accounts for 8%.
If you have money, it will be easier to change your concept.
Nowadays, many elderly people are willing to spend more money to provide for the elderly. In addition, many college graduates are willing to work in nursing homes. If my relatives really invested back then, they should have made money even now. However, if you want to make a lot of money, do something else as soon as possible.
There are also chains of contempt in nursing homes
“If you have children to come to see, have a high income, and are educated, you are the king of nursing homes”
Li Tianqiao, 78 years old, Shanghai
I was born in Shanghai. I followed my parents to settle in Beijing when I was 14 years old. I worked as an editor until I retired.
The year before last, my wife fell ill and passed away. I also had some problems with my own body: heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and rheumatoid… The children are all abroad, so it’s not convenient to come back to take care of me. So discuss
One person gave me a little money to live in a nursing home.
Fortunately, this nursing home is close to the city and the medical conditions are good. I am not very talkative and don’t like to make friends, so I stayed in a single room. Before I knew it, I lived there for more than a year.
When I entered a nursing home, I learned that there are so many elderly people with children abroad. Anyway, everyone says that, comparing it.
The space in the nursing home is small. I listened to bragging all day long. Everyone was a big cadre, and his children were all rich men. There is nothing new.
I have three children who don’t have much contact with each other. After graduation, the eldest went to the United States, the second went to Canada, the third was in Australia, and later they stayed abroad.
When the eldest child gave birth, I went to the United States to help take care of the child for a while, but I was really not used to staying abroad, so I returned to China.
Occasionally they ask me through WeChat,
How was your life in the nursing home?
It’s okay if you don’t ask, I get angry when I ask, what is good? When I get older, my body must go downhill in all aspects. Every time they ask this, I think
They treat me as a robot, it seems that as long as something is not good, I will be fine if I change the part.
I was lonely in the nursing home. I miss my original home, where I collected a lot of stamps, coins, and some oil lamps.
I want to bring those oil lamps to the nursing home to play, but II couldn’t take it, and the nursing home felt that the kerosene lamp was unsafe, so I didn’t agree to take it in.
Most elderly people like to say: “Enough to live”. But in fact,
We still regret our lives when we encounter a situation.
During my time in the nursing home, there was an old lady who was more than 10 years older than me. She was critically ill last year and was rescued. Later, the doctor said that in the emergency room, the old lady kept asking: “Am I not working? The doctor, you have to help me.”
Where can people really live enough?
Even if you live to be more than 90 years old, you really have the instinct to survive when you encounter life and death.
There is nothing to say about the environment in the nursing home. Most of the elderly are waiting to die here. There are also old people who have become demented. They are just like a log here-they are moved out by the caregiver at a fixed time every day to bask in the sun, and then they will be moved back in a few hours.
Sometimes the caregiver tidied the room and threw them into the corner of the corridor. They were shocked when they passed by–there was a big living person, but they didn’t respond. There are also some elderly people who suddenly yell and cannot understand what they are yelling.
At present, I can basically take care of myself. If you are worried, don’t be a few years later. I will be like them.