Abstract: Appropriate assessment of the service accessibility of residential care facilities is important for making policies on the allocation of residential care resources. In accordance with policy requirements for the service of residential care facilities in Shanghai, this study modifies the traditional Two-step Floating Catchment Area (2SFCA) method by introducing a power function as a distance decay relationship, employing multi-radius service areas, using the shortest driving distance to measure the distance parameter, and introducing administrative restrictions. With the proposed method, residential care services were calculated and analyzed at the town level. Service accessibility results were then compared under two scenarios. The results show that service accessibility of Shanghai residential care facilities is far below the planning targets for 2020. Less than 1/3 of the towns had service accessibility values with at least 35 beds per thousand elderly people. Comparing the results from two scenarios studied, we found that administrative barriers resulted in lower accessibility for most towns, especially in urban areas where the elderly population density is high; consequently, this significantly enlarged the rural-urban divide.

Key words: residential care facility, service accessibility, 2-Step Floating Catchment Area Method, rural-urban divide, aging