Abstract
BackgroundsThe oldest-old population is increasing sharply in China, and intergenerational support has been their primary source of caregiving. Although intergenerational support has been found to be associated with wellbeing of older people in previous study, most analysis were from the perspective of children’s characteristics and exchange patterns. This study aims to investigate the impact of different types of intergenerational support on subjective wellbeing among Chinese oldest-old and the variation across groups of different economic status, based on their five-tier of needs (physiological needs, safety needs, love/belonging needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs).MethodsWe included older adults aged ≥ 80 years from the 2018 Chinese longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS). We assessed older people’s subjective wellbeing by their life satisfaction and psychological health. We evaluated four types of intergenerational support: parents provide financial support, receive financial, instrumental and emotional support. We applied binary logistic regression analysis to analyze the association between different intergenerational support and older people’s subjective wellbeing and the moderating effect of self-rated economic status on this relationship.ResultsA total of 8.794 participants were included, with a mean age of 91,46 years (standard deviation:7.60). Older adults who provide financial support (OR: 1.37, 95% CI: 1.01, 1.85) and receive emotional support (OR: 1.99, 95% CI: 1.40, 2.83) report better subjective wellbeing. However, receiving instrumental support depressed psychological health (OR: 0.67, 95% CI: 0.56, 0.79) while improved life satisfaction (OR: 1.42, 95% CI: 1.04, 1.55). Receiving emotional support promoted parents’ psychological health among all combinations of support, and receiving all the three types together raised their subjective wellbeing most.ConclusionsOur study recognizes that higher level of subjective wellbeing for oldest-old is related to providing financial support, receiving emotional and certain instrumental support. In addition, higher economic status can moderate these associations.
Highlights
Population aging is a ubiquitous problem worldwide, especially in China
In China, Xing firstly [5] systematically expounded the measurement of subjective well-being and summarized it into two indicators: one is in the sense of life satisfaction, which defines subjective well-being as people’s cognitive evaluation of their own life satisfaction; another is in the sense of psychological health, which points out that subjective well-being depends on the balance of positive and negative emotions in a certain period of time
The social network tends to shrink [7], physical function deteriorates uncontrollably especially for oldest-old, family support continues to be a primary source of care and support for old people in many developing countries [8], motivating our attention to the relationship between intergenerational support and subjective well-being among oldestold
Summary
Population aging is a ubiquitous problem worldwide, especially in China. Rapid declines in mortality and fertility are expected to accelerate the aging process. Increasing with age, frailty and multimorbidity have been suggested as risk factors for psychological health [4]. These changes in life circumstances suggest that aging might be related with declining well-being among the older adults. Evidence from China suggested that among oldest-old, factors correlated with life satisfaction include sex, education, place of residence, self-rated health status, regular physical examination, perceived relative economic status, access to social security provisions, commercialized insurances, living arrangements, and number of social services available in the community, while the traditional role of family in supporting the older persons continued to be an important contributor [6]. The social network tends to shrink [7], physical function deteriorates uncontrollably especially for oldest-old, family support continues to be a primary source of care and support for old people in many developing countries [8], motivating our attention to the relationship between intergenerational support and subjective well-being among oldestold
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