A Gender Perspective In The Oldest Old Social Support And Life Satisfaction

Being different from the traditional theories of social stratification on the property, power and prestige, we reach the oldest-old's social support differentiation in gender perspectives. This is because the objects of study in this article are born in groups before 1925. For the impact of the social systems, cultures, customs and other social settings in history, women was expected to play a marginal role in the mainstream of political, economic, social and cultural life in their process of growth and development. This condition is accompanied by the edge of their life. This makes the elderly women show different characteristics from the elderly men in social support condition as well as in the attitude of life.In this paper, we use the quantitative research methods. By data analysis and regression model based on large amounts of data, we found facts as follows. First, because the elderly men are more superior in marital status, physical condition, mental health status, occupational status and present economic income, etc compared with the elderly women, their social supports are more comprehensive than the elderly women's. In addition, the living area has a certain influence on the degree of the social support's gender differentiation. The gender differences of the elderly' social supports in rural areas were larger than it in urban areas. Second, the gender differentiation on the old life satisfaction is significant. However, its influence can only be realized through variables as condition of their health, mental health status, whether the source of life care and emotional support needs can be met and so on.