The Relationship Between Family Structure and Elderly's Mental Health and Life Satisfaction in China: Does Social Support Change Matter?

Background/Purpose:China has the largest aging population (131 million) in the world and is undergoing dramatic population aging. At the same time, Chinese family structure, such as family size, living arrangement, family function, change dramatically.  Current senior care system (“9073”system) and social security system were planned by the government without addressing the older adult’s preference and psychological health.  The relationship between family structure and the mental health or life satisfaction, and the role of social support, are important but understudied questions.

The aim of this study is to find the relationship between the family structure and elderly’s psychological well-being and life satisfaction, and how does the social support mediate these relationships. The ultimate aim is to find the way to improve older adults’ mental health and influence the relevant policies.

Additionally, I also test the task-specific theory and to see whether it can explain the social support’s impact on seniors’ life. Task-specific model has been advanced to understand how the support support affects older adults. However, this theory is rooted in western culture, and has not been fully tested in Chinese social context.

Methods: Data and sample:We use data from the first five waves (1998, 2000, 2002, 2005, and 2008) of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS). Each year’s sample includes over 9,000 older adults.

Measures:Measures of family structure are family size, number of children, living arrangement and living proximity. Due to lack of detailed data, our study is limited to self-reported life satisfaction, psychological well-being, and social support receiving status.

Empirical Strategies:We first do multiple imputations for the missing data. Then, we estimate a series of multiple regression models, using ordinary least squares for continuous variables and logistic regression for dichotomous variables. In the first set of models, measures of family structures are regressed on the depression and life satisfaction together with control variables. In the second set of models, we add the social support variables and estimate the full models. Comparing the results of two sets of models allow us to understand the mediation effect of social support.

Results:We find that 1) the family size is positively associated with the elderly’s life satisfaction; 2) older Chinese adults who live alone have lower life satisfaction than their counterparts living with spouse or living with other generation family members; 3) having informal instrumental support improves older adults’ psychological well-being in China; 4) having informal emotional support improves the older adults’ life satisfaction and mediate the effect of living arrangement.

Conclusions and Implications: Our findings suggest that although the family structure changes a lot, the Chinese older adults benefit from living with family members and large family size. To improve their mental health and life satisfaction, policy makers should provide more support to their family to ease family’s instrumental support burden and create effective programs to help older adults build social networks.