Twenty Years’ Follow-Up Surveys on Elder People’s Health and Quality of Life

Abstract

AbstractWith a brief overview on changes of elderly people and related socio-economic and policy changes during the last two decades in China, this chapter introduces the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS). It tracks follow-up survey waves that came after the initial CLHLS and the evolution of CLHLS questionnaire design over 20-year period. The CLHLS database contains approximately 130 thousand records of surviving and deceased elderly people aged 65 and above. The chapter introduces the sampling design used by CLHLS, lists core information collected by the survey, and identifies major items added to follow-up surveys. With a focus on the sixth and seventh waves of the survey in 2011 and 2014, the data quality of the two waves is also introduced briefly on accuracy of age reporting, reliability and validity of major health measurements and mortality, logical error, proxy, nonresponse and missing data. This chapter also summarizes how CLHLS data is used and related publications.