| The General Secretary Xi Jinping made an important instruction on strengthening ageing affairs in February,23th,2016. He stressed that "an effective response to China's aging affairs is related to the overall situation of national development and the well-being of millions of people." Accompanied by a strict family planning policy and the rapid pace of economic development, the aging is developping by strides in our country. It has posed threat not only to the current social security system and economic trends, but also to the traditional moral system, resulting in a comprehensive and profound impact on daily lives of the elderly. In China's huge "silver" team, there is a special group which need additional attention. That is solitary elderly. As the name suggests, Solitary elderly is the elderly people who live alone. They are different from the gerenal elderly people. Generally, they have strong self-care ability, but they are usually more lonely than the general elders in that they are lacking of timely care from their spouses and children compared to general olders. Due to the degradation of the physical and cognitive function, elderly people living alone often prone to falls, burns, electric shock and other injuries and are always absent of immediate help. Solitary elders are "sudden emergence" groups. Maybe we should to kown what their economic and physical situation are, what emotional support they need. Are they satisfied with their own living conditions? And which factor will influence the life satisfication of urban solatiry people? These issues deserve our attention.Concerning about these issues, the author participated in a major project of national social science named "The Research of China's Urban Home-care Security System in The Future Ten Years" at the end of 2013 in Chengdu and has mastered first-hand information about life situations of the 70-years old and upper elders who live alone in downtown Chengdu. Based on the outcomes of previous studies, this paper is created.The value and possible innovations of this study are as follows:Firstly, this paper focus on urban elders living alone, and has presented plenty of first-hand data which can be used by other reachers for reference. Secondly, systematic literature review about solitary elders and impacting factors of elders have been combed in this paper. Finally, the paper has not only analyzed the influencing factors of urban solitary elders'life satisfication, but has also explored the way in which each factor impacts on life satisficaion, and this has further deepened the results of previous studies.This paper is divided into four parts:The first part includs parts of introduction and research design.The introduction part has introduced the background, value and the possible innovation of this paper. Articles about elderly people living alone and the life satisfaction of elders at home and abroad have been reviewed and evaluated in this part to find the starting point of this article. The research design section has briefly described the object, methods, construction, research thought and some concepts of this paper. Some contents in this survey have also been introduced in this section.The second part includs chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter5 and chapter 6 and has described the living conditions of urban solitary elderly people living alone and and initially analyzed the correlation between some factors and life satisfaction with single factor analysis method. It's one of the main section of this article and descriptive analysis method has been mainly used in this part.Chapter 3 has described the demographic characteristics of urban elderly people living alone and the overall life satisfaction. Chi-square test has been used to exam the relationship between demographic characteristics and solitary olders'life satisfaction. The study found that elderly people living alone in cities are mostly women; their age are mainly between 70 to 84-years old; the overall education level is low; the vast majority of urban elderly people living alone is divorced and widowed elderly; they have zero to eight children and most have one to five; About 70% urban elderly people living alone are satisfied with the current living conditions,7.4% are not. The study also found that, the relationship between gender, age, education level, marital status, children numbers and life satisfaction are not statistically significant.Chapter 4 has described the economic situation of the urban elders living alone and its relation to life satisfaction. The study found that, the income level of urban elderly people living alone is relatively higher, while the income gap is not obvious. In terms of the structure of income, the income chnanel of the urban solitary elders is too narrow, and the urban solitary elders'income depens highly on pensions. The level of expenditure of urban solitary elders is also relatively high, but is slightly lower than the level of income. It's the main reason the vast majority of elderly people living alone has an economic balance. The expenditure channel of urban solitary elders is wider than income channel. The main items of expenditure are basic necessities of daily living expenses and medical expenses. Medical expense occupies an important position in the daily expenditure of urban elderly people living alone and is worth high attention. The solitary old men's economic situation is better than women both in objective condition and subjective evaluation. Economic balance and self-assessment economic situation are significantly correlated with life satisfaction. This chapter has additionally discusses medical expenses of urban elderly people living alone. One quarter of urban elderly people living alone regard "not have enough money to see a doctor" as a major medical treatment difficult and there are also a quarter of solitary retirees see this as a major difficulty of getting medical treatment. And those groups who don'f"has enough money to see a doctor" have worse objective economic situation and self-assessment economic situation than orthers. Whether retired workers should continue to pay health insurance premiums requires careful decision.Chapter 5 has described the health status of urban solitary elderly people and its relationship with life satisfaction. The study found that elderly people living alone have relatively better physical health saituations; they suffer from the same kind of chronic diseases with Shanghai urban elderly people. The average number of chronic diseases is slightly below the average level of the elderly population's in Shanghai. The quality of medical services is good in Chengdu for olders, while it is still need to be improved. The ability of daily life of urban solitary elderly people is good, and the number of disabilities and partial disabilities are lower than the average of national proportion of older persons'. The leisure activities of urban solitary people are rich, but not as rich as Shanghai elderly population. Elderly men living alone are better than solitary wemen both in body health and self-rated health. Urban elderly people's life satification has a significant correlation with the number of chronic diseases they suffer, the ability of daily life, the feeling of loneliness and unreality and self-rated health status.Chapter 6 has described the emotional support of urban solitary elderly people and its relationship with life satisfaction.66.2% of elderly people living alone has a good relationship with families; and 73.5% of them has a good relationship with their neighbors. Only 38.4% of solatiry elderly people have a good relationship with community cardres. Family and neighborhood relationships have significant ralationships with life satisfaction, while the correlation between population-cardre relationship and life satisfaction is not so significant.The third part is Chapter 7, which is the core part of this paper. It has used the mathod of empirical analysis and has deepened and verificated the conclusions of the second part. This section has used SPSS 19.0 which comes with ordinal logit model to verify the factors which have passed chi-square test in the second portion.The reaserh has found that self-assessment of economic situation, medical insurance, self-rated health, loneliness, sense of purpose, family relationships, neighborhood relationships have direct impacts on the life satisfaction of urban elderly living alone; while having specific disease reimbursed treatment of outpatient, the number the of chronic diseases they suffer, the number and frequency they participate in the elderly activitives, the frequency of children's visit or contact them only have indirect effects on life satisfactions of urban elderly living alone. This part has also summarized the way various factors impact on life satisfaction of urban solitary elderly people and found that factors which have direct influence on life satisfication are all subjective factors (subjective evaluation or psychological factors) except for medical insurance, while those 5 indirect impacting factors are all objective factors. This paper has explained for this and has come up with targeted policy recommendations based on the results of empirical analysis. From the government and community's aspect, a normal pension increasing mechanism should be established, and sources of income for the elderly should be broadened;a further relax restrictions on eligibility of reimbursement outpatient specific disease for urban solatiry people is needed; solitary retirees should not continue to pay health insurance premiums and the government should also create conditions to enrich cultural lives of the solitary elderly people. For children, they should give necessary financial support and more moral support to their parents living alone. Urban solitary elderly people themselives shouod try to participate in more group activities to improve neighborhood relations.The fourth part is Chapter 8, which is the summary of the full text. It has pointd out the shortcomings of this article:English literature review is insufficient, having not well understanded the knowledge of mathematical statistics; restricted by the questionnaire designing, the conclusions of the study can not be all generalized, ect. |
PDF Full Text Request