Study On The Self-rated Health Status Of The Ederly And Its Influencing Factors

With the declining birth rate and the extension of average life expectancy,Population ageing has become an inevitable trend of today’s population development.At the present China has the world’s largest elderly population, this scale will increaserapidly in the next two to three decades. But the life expectancy with no disease of theelderly is still very short, the quality of their life is not high. Therefore, it’s one of theimportant issues in that should be paid attention to in building a moderately prosperoussociety to research the health status of the elderly population and its influencing factors,to develop targeted policies and measures and to improve the health and quality of lifeof the elderly population.Health is not merely the absence of disease and disability, it’s the good conditionof the physical, psychological and social function. Self-rated health is a combinationindicator of subjective and objective health, and it can better reflect the healthcondition of the population. A large number of foreign studies have shown thatself-rated health of the elderly is a good indicator in evaluating the health status of theelderly comprehensively and predicting the risk of death of the elderly. Since the1980s,China has done a lot of research work in the elderly population self-rated health andachieved fruitful results.On the basis of the outcomes of the research on the self-rated health of the elderlyfrom both home and abroad, this thesis carries out descriptive statistical analysis andmultivariate Ordinal logistic regression analysis on the self-rated health status of theelderly by use of the data from the “Survey on the living condition of the elderly anddemands of public services for the elderly in China” which implemented in Qiqihar City in2010by the research group from the Research Center of China’s populationAgeing and Socio-economic Development, Jilin University. Specifically, the thesisanalyzes the main factors that influence the self-rated health of the elderly throughmultivariate Ordinal logistic regression based on the analysis of the influencedcondition on the self-rated health by the demographic factors, socioeconomic factors,lifestyle and health condition factors of the elderly in Qiqihar City.The results show that there are many factors that affect the self-rated health of theelderly in Qiqihar City: Self-rated health status relates not only to demographic factorssuch as gender and age, but also to health status such as whether suffering fromchronic diseases and ADL ability and capacity of living independently.Based on these conditions, in order to further improve the health and the lifequality of the elderly, the thesis advances the following six suggestions: first, to makegreater efforts in caring for the special elderly population by means of the livelihoodprojects in Heilongjiang Province; second, for the government to increase investmentin the cause of aging and increase medical assistance to the elderly population; third, tomake full use of community health services and other resources and vigorously carryout health promotion among the elderly; fourth, to make full use of existing resourcesto solve the problem of the lack of activity sites for the elderly; fifth, to createconditions actively to promote independent living and social participation for theelderly; sixth, to promote the culture fashion of respecting the elderly to form the loveand supporting the elderly system.