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Long-term Care in Asia

I am deeply grateful for the support and patience of Dr. Amanda Barusch and Dr. Carmen Morano, respectively the Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor of the Journal of Gerontological Social Work, during the 18 months I have been working on this special issue. At first, I thought it would be a straightforward task to act as the guest editor for this special issue on longterm care (LTC) in Asia, as the idea for this issue arose out of a symposium on a similar topic I organized at the 2010 Joint World Conference on Social Work and Social Development and all symposium presenters supported the idea. But a few of them later decided not to submit their papers for journal publication. I also did not expect that I would leave my teaching job at the University of Minnesota and move back to Hong Kong to spend more time with my aging parents and to join hands with my colleagues to advance gerontological education and research in Asia. Although I had grown up in Asia and received my bachelor’s and MSW degrees there, moving back after living in the United States for 18 years was a challenge. The pace of life in Hong Kong and some Eastern Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea, is extremely fast; this is also true of the pace at which the region’s populations have aged. For instance, it took 115 years in France, 85 years in Sweden, and 69 years in the United States for the proportions of older people in their populations to double from 7% to 14%, but only 26 years in Japan and China, 19 years in Singapore, and 18 years in South Korea (Kinsella & He, 2009). Now that I am back in Asia, I have been able to witness first-hand the effects of an aging population in this region and the issues it raises.