Subjective wellbeing among older adults: the role of age-friendly facilities

Abstract

Abstract Due to population aging, the amount of older adults in the western world is increasing. To support this growing group, policy initiatives have focused on supporting aging-in-place, which is meant to stimulate community dwelling through providing important services and facilities (WHO, 2004). In this study we link the availability of facilities to older adults' subjective wellbeing. Older adults identify facilities as important for their wellbeing (Novak & Menec, 2013) because they satisfy daily needs and stimulate social contact and physical activity (Nieboer & Cramm, 2018; Maas et al., 2009). However, it is unknown which specific services relate to the wellbeing of older adults (Stephens et al., 2020). Moreover, relatively few studies have studied positive health outcomes, including subjective wellbeing, to the living environment (Zhang & Zhang, 2017). Additionally, we test whether the relationship between the availability of services and subjective wellbeing is explained by an increased sense of mastery. Feeling of mastery over the environment and decisions is key to subjective wellbeing among elderly (Menec, Means, Keating, Parkhurst, & Eales, 2011). If older adults feel limited in their daily activities and have to rely on others because the availability of services in their immediate environment is low, they will experience a lower sense of mastery and thereby less subjective wellbeing (Chen et al., 2016). This assumption is however scarcely tested empirically. We used survey data on older adults in a Dutch province (65+) from the Health Monitor (2016). We combined this with data from Statistics Netherlands about facilities (supermarket, general practitioner, pharmacy and public transport) at the district level. Different measures of availability are included: the average available amount of services per 1 km and the average distance to facilities per district. Multilevel regression is used as our method of analysis. Key messages This study has as a main aim to find out which facilities influence older adult subjective wellbeing. This is important to policymakers, because it gives information for planning policies. We test whether the relationship between the availability of facilities and subjective wellbeing is explained by an increased sense of mastery.