Research On The Influence Of Social Participation On The Mental Health Of The Elderly In China

In the 21st century,the world is facing the increasingly severe situation of population aging,which is an inevitable demographic phenomenon in human history and will be irreversible for a long time.In order to actively cope with population aging,in 2002,the second world assembly on aging of the United Nations put forward the concept of active aging,affirmed the social value of the elderly,"health,participation,security" as a strategy to cope with the challenges of population aging.With the increasingly aggravating of the aging population in China,it is particularly important to establish and advocate the concept of active aging.As an important part of active aging,health and participation are studied,which is of great significance to cope with the aging population.At present,there are many researches on social participation in China,but the research linking it with mental health of the elderly needs to be expanded.On the basis of sorting out relevant literature,this paper studies the influence of social participation on the mental health of the elderly,and analyzes the causal effect between the two,which has important practical significance for the realization of active aging and provides a decision basis for improving the quality of life of the elderly.Based on the data of the 2015 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study(CHARLS)nationwide tracking survey,this paper studied the influence of social participation on the mental health of the elderly.The research includes five aspects.First,the previous literature was sorted out and analyzed.On this basis,the measurement indicators of social participation and mental health of the elderly were selected according to the data,and the factors affecting mental health and social participation in decision-making of the elderly were summarized.Second,this paper USES OLS model to conduct regression analysis,and makes a preliminary judgment on the relationship between social participation and mental health of the elderly.Thirdly,the propensity score matching method is used to identify the relationship between social participation and mental health of the elderly,so as to solve the estimation bias caused by sample selection bias.Fourth,a sub-sample regression was carried out for different age groups and different genders to study the heterogeneity of the influence of social participation on the mental health of different elderly people.Fifth,in order to get a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between social participation and mental health of the elderly,it is necessary to make social participation specific and divide it into five categories according to the nature of participation: the simple friendship,the public welfare participation,the physical exercise,the community participation,the entertainment participation,as to research in different social participation type heterogeneity influence on the mental health of the elderly.The results show that the elderly have a good mental health,but a low level of social participation and a lack of diversified forms of participation,which are mainly focused on making friends and entertainment activities.Social participation can significantly improve the mental health level of the elderly,that is,compared with the elderly who did not engage in social participation,the elderly with social participation behavior have lower depression degree and higher mental health level.At the same time,OLS regression may underestimate the impact of social participation on the mental health level of the elderly,taking into account the sample selection bias.Further research found that there was heterogeneity in the influence of social participation on the mental health of the elderly.With the growth of age,the proportion of social participation in the elderly gradually decreased,but the role of social participation in the improvement of the mental health of the elderly was gradually enhanced.The proportion of female social participation is lower than that of male,but the promotion effect of social participation on the mental health of female elderly is significantly higher than that of male.In addition,different types of social participation have different impacts on the mental health of the elderly.Simple friendship,physical exercise and entertainment participation can significantly improve the mental health level of the elderly,among which entertainment participation has the strongest effect on the mental health level of the elderly.