Abstract: Based on the China Longitudinal Aging Social Survey in 2014, this paper assesses the care demands of the Chinese elderly in multiple dimensions and describes the supply of the care. The results show that 8.54% of the elderly depend on the activities of daily living, 40.06% depend on the instrumental activities of daily living. About 8% of the elderly need to be cared by professional long-term services, and 2.19% of those severely disabled who depend on ADL are the focus group for the long-term care services. The elderly in the rural areas, female elderly and the oldest ones have comparatively serious cognitive and depressive problems. Family members are the primary caregivers for 94.96% of the older people who need to be cared. The paper suggests that it is necessary to set up a long-term care system with reasonable share of responsibilities by individual, family, society and government and strengthen the accurate and dynamic assessment of the care demands by older people.

Key words: older people, demands of old-age care, social service for older people, level of activity of daily living, cognitive ability