Adult Children's Intergenerational Mobility and Older Adults' Self-Rated Health: A U.S.-China Comparison.

Abstract

This study examines whether and how adult children's educational mobility is associated with the self-rated health of older adults aged 50 and above in China and the United States. The analytic sample included 12,445 Chinese respondents from the 2011 to 2013 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, and 17,121 US respondents from the 2010 to 2012 Health and Retirement Study. Multinomial logistic regression was employed to examine the relationship between children's educational mobility and parents' self-rated health, and the Karlson-Holm-Breen-method was used for mediation analysis. Adult children's upward mobility was associated with their parents' better health in both countries. This association was mediated by child-to-parent economic support, as well as parents' social engagement and depressive symptoms in China; in the United States, parents' depression was the only significant mediator. This study is among the first to empirically show the benefit of adult children's upward mobility for their parents' health. The cross-national differences in the mediating paths suggest that the cross-over effect of children's intergenerational mobility on their parents' health is embedded within specific sociocultural contexts.