Analysis on the contents of Macao elderly care service policy

Heliyon. 2024 Nov 1;10(23):e40051. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e40051. eCollection 2024 Dec 15.

Abstract

The global trend of an increasingly ageing society poses significant healthcare and socio-economic challenges for policymakers and caregivers. As Macao, China, entered an ageing society, policymakers were deeply concerned about this issue, then they launched a ten-year action plan in 2016 to improve healthcare services and increase geriatric education, which made great progress. This research aims to investigate the impact of these policy tools on elderly care services by using the content analysis method to analyze the "Macao Special Administrative Region Elderly Security Mechanism and Ten-Year Action Plan for Elderly Services from 2016 to 2025". The findings indicate that the distribution of pension instruments in Macao differs in terms of quantity and the specific structures used to combine them because policy instruments have been unbalanced, with a dominance of ecological types, an uneven structure of supply types, and a lack of demand types. Finally, this paper suggests that the design of policies for the elderly should make comprehensive use of policy instruments to improve the balance of the internal structure to meet the diverse needs of the elderly and advance the construction of Macao's elderly care service system.

Keywords: Content analysis method; Elderly care industry; Elderly care service; Policy instruments.