Study On The Living Arrangements And Wishes Of The Elderly In China

The core issue of population ageing is how to support the elderly, while home care for the elderly is the major form in China. Living arrangement for the old people is especially important, since it involves almost every aspects of intergenerational relationship, ranging from money, service to emotional interaction. This study employed data from2010China Census to describe the living arrangement for the elderly in China, and utilized data from2006Survey of the Aged Population in China to describe the living preference of the elderly. Then, this study tested the socio-demographic characteristics which predict the living preference, using Pearson chi-square and ordinal logistic regression. The data was drawn from2011China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey. The results show that there is a huge rural-urban divide of living arrangement in China. However, co-residence with adult children is still the dominant living arrangement in China, although the proportion of that arrangement has seen a declining trend. When it comes to living preference, those who are women and the oldest-old are more likely to prefer living with their adult children than those who are men and have just reached their old age. Besides, the results show that hukou is the most predictive factor in determining one's living preference Health factors such as Activities of Daily Life (ADL) and psychological well-being, excluding self-rated health status, all have significant impacts. In addition, variables such as gender and education have influence on old people's living preference through different mechanism, assuming whether the respondents have spouse or not. After all, once one's spouse dies in real life, one's desire to live with children will increase greatly.