The Impact Of Living Arrangements On Health And Subjective Well-being Of Chinese Elderly

This thesis mainly discusses the impact of different living arrangements on health of elderlyin China through empirical analysis. According to previous study results, four styles of living, i.e.living alone, living with only spouse, living with multiple generations and living in beadhouse,are considered. Building health assessment system including standards of objectively-ratedhealth, self-rated health and subjective well-being, it applies qualitative research on how theliving arrangements affect health of the elderly. Using Grossman’s model of the demand forhealth and ordered probit regression method, the thesis studies effects of the elderly’s livingarrangements from2005to2008on health and subjective well-being in2008, based on dataderived from the2005and2008waves of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey(CLHLS), and introduces typical features like main sources of income, genders, ages andresidential areas to draw further conclusion.The study suggests that statistically living standards have no significant effect on eitherobjectively rated health or self-rated health but subjective well-being. It also shows that theelderly who are living in beadhouse with financial independence have notable strength inenjoying good health and strong happiness while the elderly who on government’s subsidy,living alone or with only spouse are mostly in bad health condition. The elderly who arefinancially supported by their children are living significantly happily with multiple generationsor with only spouse, which complies with traditional endowment concept. Furthermore, theimpacts of living arrangements on health conditions of the elderly varies with different genders,ages and residential areas. At the end of the thesis posted suggestions on improvement of healthof elderly in China.