Abstract
Population aging has become a crucial problem in China. Recently, the Chinese government has adopted many strategies and policies to solve this problem and improve the quality of life of older individuals. The present study aimed to examine the effect of physical health on quality of life among older individuals in the context of Chinese culture and explore the potential mediating roles of positive cognition and negative emotions in the association between physical health and quality of life. Data were from the wave of 2017–2018 of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey. Data on physical health, quality of life, positive cognition, and negative emotions of 15,874 older people were included in the present study. Pathway analysis was conducted by using IBM SPSS AMOS 21.0, and double verified using PROCESS Macro for SPSS 3.5.3. Results showed that physical health was positively associated with quality of life among older individuals in the context of Chinese culture. The effect size was small to moderate. Positive cognition and negative emotions independently and serially mediated the linkage of physical health and quality of life. These findings provided empirical evidence for the activating event-belief-consequence theory of emotion and hierarchy of needs theory and indicated that Chinese older people focused more on physical health rather than mental health. Practitioners could teach older individuals strategies of emotion regulation and cognitive appraisal to improve the quality of life of older individuals.
Highlights
Rapid aging is becoming an important public health issue in the global population.Problems associated with aging have become serious in China as well
The present study aimed to examine the effect of physical health on quality of life among older individuals in the context of Chinese culture, further explore how physical health affects the quality of life
Except for positive cognition, our results showed that negative emotions mediated the association between physical health and self-perceived quality of life
Summary
Rapid aging is becoming an important public health issue in the global population. Problems associated with aging have become serious in China as well. As of 2020, China has approximately 180 million older people aged 65 years or older, which account for. 13% of the population [1]. The Chinese government has adopted a series of actions to address this challenge, including raising the retirement age and allowing all couples to have three children. Improving the quality of life and life satisfaction of older individuals in China is important with the advent of an aging society.
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