With the decreasing mortality and the enforcement of "only one child family policy", China is becoming an aged society. It will be impossible to provide care for the elderly only depending on family supports when the family structures have changed tremendously and the aging population steep rising. Our study focused on the views of the parents with only one child in family in China. The aim was to identify the problems regarding the health care for the elderly, and analyzed the care needs for the elderly in the future. After 547 college students receiving basic courses in a university in the south China were selected, self-administered questionnaires were mailed to their parents. A total of 331 parents who responded were regarded as research objects (Overall response rate was 60%). The results were as follows. 1) The opinion on the care of the elderly was changing from conventional care provided by family members to the mixture of the family based care and the home care services in one-child family. 2) Since elderly care supported by family is limited, only half of the subjects expressed their worries concerning the health status, economic and health care in the future when they or their family members become old. 3) Regardless of their income level, more than 70 percent intent to use both family's care and home care service. Moreover, they were likely to depend on care centering on home care service as the home annual income became higher. 4) More than 80 percent preferred the institutional care, and they expected the more institutions as a future policy option. 5) As one of the measures against the aged society in China, improving the preventive activities and health care services, increasing the number of medical facilities and improving the quality of home care services is impending.
