人口學家和政策者近年來已把「人口老化」所帶來的社會衝擊和衛生福利政策需求當作焦點。其中的核心問題便是老年人口的依賴性──不論是經濟上的，抑或醫療、生活照顧上的依賴。因此，位一個人口的集體的特性面出發，人口學家便直接將老年人口定義作「依賴人口」，創造了新的學術語言o然而，一群社會人口的依賴性，不少是經過社會建構出來的。而且老年人口的依賴是具有結構性的，深深受到社會階層、性別、種族、城鄉及世代社會變遷因素的影響，可從淵遠流長、根深蒂固的生產年齡所經歷的社會資源分佈不均狀態下延續到「老來的生活品質」，並且此不均握有「深化」、「極化」的可能。這些不平等的依賴結構因素中，又以「性別」因素最為深遠，且最易受到各層文化及制度性的掩蓋，隱入「家庭」之私有範疇內，不像「社會階層」等公共領域的問題受到政治運作的批判和檢視而得以彰顯出來。而本篇論文即嘗試以社會建構角度出發，探討老年依賴的結構，並以老年掃女為例，根據國內現存的官方統計資料與各種重化及質性研究結果，說明社會文化及國家政策對兩性的依賴結構不平等現況及女性依賴性的建構特質之影響。

The purpose of the paper is to examine the nature and the structure of elderly women’s dependency condition and the underlying socio-cultural-political forces. From the social constructive perspective, we focused on three constructive forces-­the Chinese patriarchal/patrilocal family system, the gender role, and the state policy on elderly welfare. Three types of dependency--- economic dependency, dependency for personal and health care, and living arrangement were examined. The nature of dependency which related to inter- vs. intra- generational relationship, and to the public vs. private/family provision is also our emphasis. By reanalyzing the existing official statistics and research report, we discovered four major findings: 1/Women’s familial roles have confined them to private、social space, and their disadvantaged economic conditions and needs have been invisible and ignored in the public policy discourse; 2/ Due to "the patrilineal living arrangement", "high prevalence of widowhood", and "the lack of longterm care services", elderly women have had to depend on their sons and daughters-in-laws for varieties of needs; 3/ Women’s high dependency on sons and daughters-in-laws creates great tension between in-laws and affect the wel1- being and social rights of these two generations of women; 4/ Different problems are faced by women of different cohorts due to rapid social and political changes in Taiwan. Their specific needs for social services have also been ignored.