Health among the oldest-old in China: Which living arrangements make a difference?
Section snippets
Hypotheses
Fig. 1 depicts our conceptualization of the linkages between living arrangements and health. We hypothesize that baseline living arrangements have significant effects on current health (i.e., that measured at Wave 2), independent of baseline health status, sociodemographic characteristics and children's availability. Among the different living arrangements being investigated, we expect oldest-old Chinese living with both a spouse and children to have the best health outcomes, because of the
Data and sample
This study was a secondary data analysis that was reviewed and approved by the Health Science Institutional Review Board at the University of Michigan. It was based on the first two waves of data, which had been de-identified, from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS). The survey had a randomly selected sample of oldest-old Chinese from almost half of the total number of counties and cities of the 22 provinces in China. The survey areas covered 985 million persons, or 85%
Description of the sample
Characteristics of the sample at baseline are shown in Table 1. The sample averaged 92.10 years old (range = 77–122). The majority was women (60.0%), had low education (a mean of 1.80 years of schooling), resided in rural areas (61.8%), had low occupational status (92.4%), and was Han Chinese (92.8%). The respondents had 2.39 living children on average and most (82.8%) had at least one child living nearby. At baseline, about 37.1% of the sample had ADL disability, 44.9% reported poor self-rated
Discussion
Using two waves of penal data derived from a large sample of oldest-old persons in China, this study found that living arrangements predict physical health, indicated by mortality, ADL disability and self-rated health; and that men and women differ in the association of living arrangements and mortality. Consistent findings were obtained when the analyses were repeated in a sub-sample of ‘healthy’ respondents who had no ADL disability, chronic conditions and cognitive impairment at baseline.
The
Acknowledgments
This study was supported by the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan and the National Institute on Aging (R01-AG154124). The authors wish to thank Tanya Emley for her editorial assistance. Data used for this research was provided by the longitudinal study entitled “Determinants of Healthy Longevity in China” (DHLC) managed by the Center for Healthy Aging and Family Studies, Peking University. DHLC is supported in part by funds from Duke University under an award from the
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