Beijing nursing home to offer exclusive service for childless seniors
Xinhua, June 23, 2015 Adjust font size:
A city-run nursing home in Beijing will offer an exclusive service for elderly citizens who have outlived their children, the local civil affairs bureau said Tuesday.
The Number Five Welfare Nursing Home will become a specialist nursing home for childless senior citizens who are over 70 or unable to cope at home, said the Beijing Civil Affairs Bureau.
The high-end nursing home, founded in Chaoyang District in 1999 by Beijing government, has more than 100 beds, said bureau spokesperson Li Hongbing.
Li told Xinhua that residents currently living there who have children will be relocated to other city-run homes.
In the future, it will only accept people whose only child has died.
According to the municipal government, Beijing had around 2.8 million elderly residents aged 60 and above in 2013. More than 8,700 had outlived their children.
China's birth control policy was adopted in the late 1970s, preventing some 400 million births. The regulation was loosened in 2013 and couples now are allowed to have two children if either parent is an only child.
Authorities are facing increasing pressure to care for China's growing elderly population. Endi