The Influence Of Social Support On The Physical And Mental Health Of The Rural Elderly

With the impact of the "silver wave", China has become an aging society. According tostatistical data, in2014, there are212.1million people older than60, which is more than15.5%of its population. Then, more than10.1%of its population older than65. Among them,most of the elderly lives in rural areas. Due to the lower level of economy and socialdevelopment, with insufficient supply resources of social security, rural elderly lack ofpension security. As they grow older, the rural elderly gradually withdraw from the labormarket, all kinds of social resources has been lost, health has deteriorated, cognitive functiondecline, disrupt which seriously influence their normal social interaction, the physical andmental health, and the quality of life.Domestic research about the impact of social support for the elderly health of body andmind is less, so is the research of the rural elderly. Different researcher concern differentpoints, so the results are also different. This article discuss from the perspective of formalsocial support to informal social support, refer to the ambiguous argue points from manyliterature, finding out the related factors of the rural elderly’s physical and mental health,which is of great significance to study how to effectively improve the health of China’s ruralelderly.Using the data from “china health and retirement longitudinal study” in2013, employingfactor analysis and logistic regression analysis, this paper investigates the influence of socialsupport on the physical and mental health of the rural elderly in China. It is founds thatreceiving financial support，daily care from adult children has positive effect on the physicaland mental health of the elderly, the informal social support from non-core relatives andfriends of the elder also play a beneficial role in “main-effect model”, while the formalsupport make a “buffer model” effect. The formal social support make a Crowding out effecton informal social support, with a Crowding in effect at the same time. On account of theimportance to rural elderly’s physical and mental health, formal social support does not showobvious Crowding out effect, this implies that the formal social support does notfundamentally change the endowment patterns in rural family, so the power of formal supportneeds to be strengthened.