Living Arrangements and Older Adults' Psychological Well‐Being and Life Satisfaction in China: Does Social Support Matter?
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12326 |
| Date | 01 October 2018 |
| Author | Xupeng Mao,Wen‐Jui Han |
| Published date | 01 October 2018 |
X M W-J H New York University
Living Arrangements and Older Adults’
Psychological Well-Being and Life Satisfaction in
China: Does Social Support Matter?
Objective: Toexamine the associations between
living arrangements and the psychological
well-being and life satisfaction of Chinese older
adults, as well as the mediating role of social
support.
Background: China has the largest elderly pop-
ulation of any nation, and the country’s overall
population is rapidly aging. At the same time,
China is experiencing substantial changes in
living arrangements, particularly among older
adults, that may have reshaped the types and
sources of social support older adults receive.
Method: Using a nationally representative
longitudinal dataset from 5 waves of the Chi-
nese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey
(N≈5,000), we carried out structural equation
modeling (SEM) to examine our research
questions.
Results: Compared with elders living with their
children, living alone was negatively associ-
ated with rural elders’ life satisfaction, whereas
urban elders living in nursing homes were more
likely to be satised with their lives. Social sup-
port not only was important to elders’ psycho-
logical well-being and life satisfaction but also
played some mediating role through receiving
formal nancial support.
Silver School of Social Work, New York University,
1 Washington Square North, New York, NY 10003
(wjh3@nyu.edu).
Key Words: Chinese older adults, life satisfaction, psycho-
logical well-being, social support.
Conclusion: Our results indicate that living
arrangements had both direct and indirect
effects (through social support) on older adults’
psychological well-being and life satisfaction.
The mediating role played by social support
differed by types and sources of social support.
Implications: Our results speak to the impor-
tance of providing social support from suitable
sources for contemporary elders in China.
For many in China, living arrangements help
dene their social interactions. Social inter-
actions, in turn, inuence an individual’s
psychological well-being and life satisfaction
(Alwin, Converse, & Martin, 1985; Waite &
Hughes, 1999). Living arrangements are partic-
ularly important late in life because the risks of
physical and mental health problems increase
with age. Living arrangements can affect levels
and types of physical and psychological support
older adults receive. Under the traditional kin
structure model, physical proximity to family
members or coresidence allows people to more
easily provide support to each other (Litwak &
Kulis, 1987).
A wealth of literature has established the
important link between living arrangements and
older adults’ psychological well-being and life
satisfaction (e.g., Courtin & Avendano, 2016;
Waite & Hughes, 1999); however, that link is
not always straightforward. For example, stud-
ies have found that older adults who live alone
do not necessarily have worse psychological
Family Relations 67 (October 2018): 567–584 567
DOI:10.1111/fare.12326
568 Family Relations
well-being or life satisfaction than those living
with others (Alwin et al., 1985; Hughes & Gove,
1981). This suggests that the level and type of
social support older adults receive may be more
important than their living arrangements; those
who live alone sometimes have better support
from informal sources such as friends than those
living with a spouse or children (Alwin et al.,
1985; Hughes & Gove, 1981). To test these
propositions, the present study addresses the link
between living arrangements and older adults’
psychological well-being and life satisfaction
in China, paying attention to the role of social
support.
We focus on Chinese older adults because
China has the largest elderly population of any
nation, and the country’s overall population is
rapidly aging. In 2015, there were 222 million
people in China who were at least 60 years of
age (which is the Chinese government’s age
threshold to be considered an older adult and
to be eligible for receiving retirement pensions),
accounting for 16% of China’s total population
(Ministry of Civil Affairs of the People’sRepub-
lic of China, 2016). By 2053, the number of peo-
ple at least 60 years of age in China is expected
to grow to 487 million, or 35% of the population
(Ge, 2014); among them, the oldest-old popula-
tion (i.e., 80 years of age and older) will grow
the fastest (Zeng, Vaupel, Xiao, Zhang, & Liu,
2002).
At the same time that the population is aging,
China is experiencing substantial changes in
living arrangements, particularly among older
adults. Thirty years ago, more than 80% of
older adults lived with their adult children,
whereas living separately from adult children
was the most common living arrangement in
2015 (National Health and Family Planning
Commission of the People’s Republic of China
[NHFPC-PRC], 2015; Tian, 1988). Given the
rapidly aging population and the changes in
elders’ living arrangements, researchers and
policymakers need to understand how older
adults’ living arrangements in contemporary
China may be linked to their psychological
well-being and life satisfaction and through
what mechanisms. Using data from the Chi-
nese Longitudinal Health Longevity Survey
(CLHLS), this study was designed to explore
these issues, including the potential mediating
role played by social support.
Traditionally, Chinese elders depend on
their children during retirement. Children,
particularly sons, have long provided nancial,
instrumental, and emotional support for their
parents as both a social norm and a responsibility
enforced by law (R. J. A. Chou, 2010). However,
China’s transformation from a state-planned to
a market-driven economy in the 1980s, coupled
with a so-called “one-child policy” that imposed
nancial penalties on families having more
than one child, has fundamentally changed the
country’s traditional family and social support
structure (Silverstein, Cong, & Li, 2006).
Between 1950 and 1975, China’s total fertil-
ity rate ranged from 4.77 to 6.11 children per
woman (United Nations, 2011). With the start
of the one-child policy in 1980, the total fertil-
ity rate began to decline dramatically. That rate
has remained below replacement levels since
the early 1990s, dropping to 1.05 children per
woman in 2015 (Guo, 2017). The rst generation
to begin bearing children during the one-child
policy era is now reaching retirement (age 60
for males and 50–55 for females). Consequently,
moving forward, elders in China will have fewer
children to rely on in later life than previous gen-
erations have had.
“Four generations under one roof”
() is a common Chinese saying
intended to indicate a successful and prosperous
life. However, China’s rapid industrialization
and urbanization in recent decades, as well as
the one-child policy, have made such living
arrangements less likely than in the past. In
2015, more than half of Chinese adults aged
60 and older lived apart from their children,
and 10% lived alone (NHFPC-PRC, 2015).
In rural China, this cultural ideal has become
unattainable because a large portion of young
adults have migrated from rural to urban areas
for economic reasons and better lives (X. Chen
& Silverstein, 2000). Youth from urban areas
also leave their hometowns for larger, more
developed cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai,
and Guangzhou. As a result, millions of elderly
parents are left behind (Zhu, 2013).
In addition, 30 years of rapid economic
growth in China has been accompanied by
increasing income disparity among different
parts of the country (e.g., between rural and
urban areas; National Bureau of Statistics of
China [NBSC], 2016), which may dispropor-
tionately affect the well-being of elders from
relatively disadvantaged backgrounds (e.g.,
rural, low-income). The separation between
urban and rural China has directly and indirectly
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