There has recently been one news report after another about seniors who have died at home alone. They bring to mind those reports we used to read about people who died in America and were only discovered after it was noticed that they hadn't taken in their newspapers or milk for several days. How quickly the ROC has caught up! These incidents have fueled widespread discussion about the elderly here, and people are asking a lot of questions: Who bears responsibility for caring for the elderly in their final years? What services do the elderly need most? What are we now doing for seniors? What is public policy for the elderly? How developed is the field of gerontology in Taiwan? And as individuals in an aging society, what should we collectively be working toward?

We have discovered that Taiwan is just taking its first steps toward developing a comprehensive set of policies toward the elderly and that gerontological research here lags even farther behind. Benefits for seniors were first promoted with the "Elderly Welfare Bill" of 1980. The legislature then began considering revisions to it in 1993, which were finally adopted in the middle of last year. Now the government provides free emergency medical care to all seniors and welfare benefits for poor old folk in addition to funding seniors' activity centers. Other aspects of what would be a comprehensive set of benefits-including institutional and in-home nursing care-are provided for spottily. Still others, such as education, psychological counseling and employment, are offered only by small private social service organizations with scant resources, or by individuals. Little research has been carried out about the elderly in Taiwan, and so we still lump together all those over 65, instead of taking into account that those 65-75 have different needs from those who are 75-85, who once again have distinct needs from those over 85. Counseling and social activities, for instance, are more important than nursing care for younger seniors, whereas nursing and medical care are obviously most important for the oldest of the old. Out of necessity social service organizations are taking over the functions of the family in providing care for the elderly. The swelling ranks of the elderly will have tremendous implications for the distribution of social resources. To set proper policy requires an adequate grounding of research into seniors' physical and mental health as well as their economic and family situations. Taiwan is by no means unique in encountering a growing number of elderly following rapid economic gains and improvements in the quality of medical care. The experiences of the advanced industrial nations in confronting these problems can serve as a reference for us, but we still need to do some basic homework: carrying out surveys about the different elderly age groups here and achieving general recognition of these problems and a consensus about how to deal with them.

In an industrial society, as extended families living under one roof have given way to smaller and smaller nuclear families, the family can no longer serve the same functions it once did in supporting the needs of all segments of the population. Yet traditional Eastern attitudes, morality and values rooted in thousands of years of history are not easy to change, and they have a big effect on how policy toward the elderly is set.

According to a survey conducted in 1996, more than 74% of elderly believe that the ideal way to pass their final years is living either with their children or next door to them, whereas only 2% of them desire to live in nursing homes-less even than the 4% who say they want to live alone. Of course, the quality of nursing homes is very uneven, which accounts for much of seniors' unwillingness to live in them. Yet at a basic level seniors still hold traditional notions about children caring for their parents in old age, and feel that they will lose face and a sense of security if they are apart from their children. Children, meanwhile, bear similar psychological and social pressures. Indeed who, if sufficiently able, would choose to "drop" the care of one's parents onto institutions? But in these fast-paced times many children are unable to meet their parents' needs, and both parents and children suffer. In particular, when seniors require around-the-clock long-term care, the burdens are too great for small modern families to bear. In contrast, old folk from Taiwan who have emigrated to America seem better able to cast off these traditional conceptions and seek to live independently. Making the most of America's welfare programs for the elderly, they are able to live out happy and comfortable twilight years.

Old age is a stage of life that everyone who lives long enough will go through. After toiling for a lifetime meeting duties to family and society, seniors should all be able to lighten their loads and enjoy life in the company of friends and loved ones. How to achieve this is a question deserving the attention of everyone and the diligence of policy makers and scholars. You and I are both growing old. When the curtain closes and it is time to leave the stage, will we be smiling, content with the life we have led?