3. Look After the Elderly
3.照顾老年人

Most Chinese seniors live with and are cared for by their relatives.
大部分中国老年人与家人生活在一起，并且由家人照顾。
it's hard to imagine two societies that deal with their elderly as differently as the U.S. and China. And I can vouch for that firsthand. My wife Junling is a Shanghai native, and last month for the first time we visited my father at a nursing home in the U.S. She was shaken by the experience and later told me, "You know, in China, it's a great shame to put a parent into a nursing home." In China the social contract has been straightforward for centuries: parents raise children; then the children care for the parents as they reach their dotage. When, for example, real estate developer Jiang Xiao Li and his wife recently bought a new, larger apartment in Shanghai, they did so in part because they know that in a few years, his parents will move in with them. Jiang's parents will help take care of Jiang's daughter, and as they age, Jiang and his wife will help take care of them. As China slowly develops a better-funded and more reliable social-security system for retirees — which it has begun — the economic necessity of generations living together will diminish a bit. But no one believes that as China gets richer, the cultural norm will shift too significantly.
很难想象会有两个国家像美国和中国一样对待老年人的方式有如此大的差异，我有第一手资料来证明此事。我的太太筠灵（音译）是上海人（译者注：当然了）。上个月，我们第一次去美国一家护理院看望我的父亲。这次经历对她震动很大，她后来对我说：“你知道，在中国，把父母放在护理院里是件耻辱的事。”中国简单的社会道德标准已经延续了若干个世纪：父母抚养孩子，孩子给父母养老、送终。例如，一位房地产开发商蒋晓立（音译）和他的太太最近在上海买了一所大房子，部分原因是他们知道，过不了几年父母就会搬过来和他们住在一起。蒋的父母会帮助蒋照看他的女儿，他们年老的时候，蒋和他的太太会照顾他们。随着中国退休人员的社会保障体系逐渐完善，资金逐渐充足（目前的情况已经不错了），几代人住在一起的经济方面的必要性会有所降低。但是没有人会认为中国变得更加富有，文化道德标准会发生这么大的改变。

To a degree, of course, three generations living under one roof has long happened in the U.S., but in the 20th century, America became a particularly mobile and rootless society. It is hard to care for one's parents when they live three time zones away.
在某种程度上说，美国人早先也有过三代同堂的时期。但是到了20世纪，美国变成了一个流动性很强、没有故乡概念的社会。人们很难去照顾住在与自己相差三个时区的父母。

Home care for the elderly will most likely make a comeback in the U.S. out of sheer economic necessity, however. The number of elderly Americans will soar from 38.6 million in 2007 to 71.5 million in 2030. But, says Arnold Eppel, who recently retired as head of the department of aging in Baltimore County, Maryland, "There won't be enough spots for them" in the country's overwhelmed nursing-home system. Appreciating the magnitude of the coming crisis, the U.S. government has begun to respond. Two new initiatives — Nursing Home Diversion and Money Follows the Person — expand subsidies for home elder care, and the Veterans Health Administration has just put in effect its own similar initiative. "The whole trend will be into home care, because nursing homes are too expensive," Eppel says, noting that nursing-home care in the U.S. costs about $85,000 annually per resident.
美国很可能恢复采取家庭护理老年人的方式来摆脱经济困境。从2007年到2030年，美国老年人的数量将从3860万飙升到7150万。但是，马里兰巴尔的摩人口部门的退休人士Arnold Eppel说，国家已经过分拥挤的护理院“无法容纳这么多人”。美国政府已经对即将到来的危机采取了行动。两项新的动议——家庭护理分流和资金落实到人将为家庭护理提供更多的津贴。退休人员健康委员会也已经采取了类似的行动。Eppel说：“趋势肯定是家庭护理，因为护理院实在是太昂贵了。”美国护理院的年费用是一个人85000美元。

In China, senior-care costs are, for the most part, borne by families. For millions of poor Chinese, that's a burden as well as a responsibility, and it unquestionably skews both spending and saving patterns in ways that China needs to change (see Save More, below). For middle-class and rich Chinese, those costs are a more manageable responsibility but one that nonetheless ripples through their economic decision-making. Still, there are benefits that balance the financial hardship: grandparents tutor young children while Mom and Dad work; they acculturate the youngest generation to the values of family and nation; they provide a sense of cultural continuity that helps bind a society. China needs to make obvious changes to its elder-care system as it becomes a wealthier society, but as millions of U.S. families make the brutal decision about whether to send aging parents into nursing homes, a bigger dose of the Chinese ethos may well be returning to America.
在中国，护理老年人的费用大部分是由家庭来承担的。对数百万贫困的中国人来说，这既是一个负担，也是一项责任，它毫无疑问地扭曲了中国人的消费和储蓄方式，而这恰恰是中国要改变的地方（见以下“更多储蓄”）。对于中产阶级和富余阶层来说，这还算是项可承担义务，但多少还是会间接影响家庭的经济决策。尽管如此，这其中还是有一些好处来平衡经济困境的：爸爸妈妈上班的时候，老人会教育孩子。他们会向孩子们灌输家庭和国家的价值观，会提供社会紧密团结的文化延续观念。随着国家更加富裕，中国需要对其老年看护社会系统做出一些改变。但是当数百万美国人在冷酷地决定是否要把老人送到护理院去的时候，中国精神或许是唤回美国良知的一剂良药。