| With the rapid population aging and the increase of the life expectancy of the elderly in China,the life quality of old people is attracting more and more attention.Middle-aged people have to support both their parents and children.Much attention was paid to the quality of their life,too.Subjective Well-Being was one of the important indicators to measure quality of life.It was not only the embodiment of people's material life level but also a reflection of the spiritual life satisfaction.There have been old sayings in China:"bring up their children for old age" and "more children more lucky and wealth".These traditional ideas believed that elderly parents'security and happiness were positively correlated with the number of children.However,some studies suggested that children were not necessarily more.Children's higher education rather than the number of children played an important role on improving the quality of rural elderly's life.This research used the data from China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study conducted in 2013 and examined the impacts of the number of children and children on the elderly's Subjective Well-Being from the Angle of the number of children and children's social and economic status on the elderly's Subjective Well-Being.Subjective Well-Being consists of two parts,life satisfaction and depression.The socioeconomic status of children was measured by three indicators:the level of education,the level of income and occupation.This study adopted both quantitative method and qualitative method.Hierarchical linear model was used to analyze the influence of number of children and children's social and economic status on the elderly's Subjective Well-Being at the individual level,family level and community level.From qualitative method,the author did investigation centering on the relevant themes about the influence of quantity and the socioeconomic status of children on the happiness of the elder and middle aged people and did deep interviews on seven interviewees in the eastern,central and western regions.The results were concluded as follows.1,The influence of the quantity of children on the life satisfaction of the middle-aged and the elderly was different.With control of the socio demographic characteristics,healthy status and household level and community level variable situations,such as age,the level of household consumption and local economic development.There was a significant negative correlation between the quantity of children and the life satisfaction among middle-aged people,however,the influence of the quantity of children on the elderly's life satisfaction was not statistically significant.2,Children's social and economic status are important factors that influencing the elderly's SWB.The level of Children's income significantly impacts the elderly's male life satisfaction and depression.Meanwhile,the level of Children's income had the deeper influence on the male's degree of depression than the female's.There was positive relation between the level of children's education and the elderly life satisfaction,but it became insignificantly when controlling for the covariates at the household and community level.Unlike the elderly's life satisfaction,the level of children's education could alleviate the degree of depression.Besides,children's occupation influence prominently on both the elderly life satisfaction and the degree of depression.3,The quantity and social economic status of Children had substitution effect on the elderly life satisfaction and the level of middle aged people's depression.4,Based on the qualitative interviews,the research concluded that traditional concept of "more children more lucky and wealth" among the elder had gradually weakened and the more children they had,the lower life satisfaction they had own.The happiness of the elder largely derived from others' positive evaluation for their children and children's comparative advantage with peer group.Elderly's happiness derived from their children's academic and career achievements. |
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