日期:2026/01/15 IAE
UN Policy Case Study（Aging Society & Life Value）正式定稿版。
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UN Policy Case Study
Aging Society & Life Value
Long-Term Care Fragmentation and the Hidden Life Cost of Middle-Generation Sacrifice
Case Overview
Country / Region: Taiwan
Policy Focus: Aging Society, Long-Term Care, Life Value Governance
Reference Framework: Charity Economicism – Core Value (V):
Maximization of a Planned and Integrated Charitable Social Welfare System
Author / Reference: Frank Chen (GCWPA / IAE Global)
Case Reference Date: January 9, 2018
1. Background: Aging Society under Structural Stress
Taiwan has entered a rapidly aging demographic phase, with a growing number of elderly individuals experiencing moderate to severe functional disabilities.
Despite a relatively advanced healthcare system, a large proportion of these elderly citizens face:
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Insufficient long-term care placement options
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Limited access to integrated medical–social services
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Unequal service quality and affordability
This has produced a systemic care gap, not an isolated social issue.
2. Structural Diagnosis: The “Four Care Fractures”
This case identifies four interrelated structural fractures in long-term care governance.
2.1 Service Fracture
A lack of diversified, high-quality, and affordable institutional or community-based care options leaves families with few viable choices for elderly placement.
2.2 Institutional Fracture
Social welfare administration (long-term care, social services) and health administration (medical treatment, rehabilitation) operate in parallel silos, with minimal coordination.
As a result, elderly individuals are frequently transferred between systems, becoming “institutional orphans” without continuity of care.
2.3 Workforce Fracture
A chronic shortage of trained caregivers—driven by low wages, high burnout, and weak social recognition—has led to a looming long-term care workforce crisis.
This raises the risk of a future “care refugee” phenomenon within the aging population.
2.4 Value Fracture
The healthcare system remains predominantly disease-oriented rather than life-oriented, prioritizing treatment episodes over dignity, emotional well-being, and holistic life quality.
3. Hidden Cost: Middle-Generation Life Value Depletion
The most critical but least measured impact falls on middle-aged children, who become the default shock absorbers of systemic failure.
They simultaneously face:
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Employment and income pressure
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Child-rearing responsibilities
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Long-term, intensive caregiving duties
Consequences include:
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Physical and mental exhaustion
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Career interruption and income loss
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Family stress and declining quality of life
These costs remain largely unrecorded in economic or fiscal accounts, despite representing a significant depletion of societal life value.
4. Life Value Governance Perspective
From a Life Value perspective, this case illustrates a core governance failure:
When social systems rely on private family sacrifice
to compensate for institutional gaps,
life value is systematically externalized and eroded.
An aging society that stabilizes elder care by consuming the life capacity of the middle generation is structurally unsustainable.
5. Policy Alignment with Charity Economicism (Core Value V)
Charity Economicism defines its fifth core value as:
Maximization of a Planned and Integrated Charitable Social Welfare System
Applied to this case, such a system must be:
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Preventive: Early intervention before severe dependency
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Integrated: Unified medical, care, and social governance
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Institutionalized: Not dependent on family self-sacrifice
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Dignity-Centered: Life quality prioritized over minimum cost
This represents not welfare expansion, but correct internalization of life costs.
6. Policy Implications
6.1 Governance Reform
6.2 Workforce Strategy
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Revalue caregiving as essential life-support labor
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Improve compensation, training, and career pathways
6.3 Life Value Accounting
7. Civilizational Assessment
This case raises a fundamental civilizational question:
Can a society claim sustainability
if it fails to protect the elderly
and simultaneously exhausts its middle generation?
From a Life Value governance perspective,
elder care capacity is a direct indicator of civilizational maturity.
8. Relevance to UN Frameworks
This case directly supports and operationalizes:
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SDG 1: No Poverty (hidden caregiver poverty risk)
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SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being
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SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities (intergenerational burden)
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SDG 16: Strong Institutions (integrated governance)
It also complements WHO frameworks on integrated people-centred health services.
9. Policy Conclusion
This case demonstrates that aging-society challenges are not merely demographic, but governance failures in life value protection.
Long-term care is not a private family obligation.
It is a collective civilizational responsibility.
Without planned, integrated welfare systems,
the true cost of aging will continue to be paid in human life depletion, not public accounts.
Civilizational Policy Statement
A society that cannot dignify aging
without sacrificing the lives of its caregivers
has not yet completed its civilizational transition.
Status of This Case Study
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✔ UN-style policy language
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✔ Life Value–based analytical framework
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✔ Direct applicability to global aging societies
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✔ Fully aligned with Charity Economicism & LVI concepts