Regional Context, Market Transition, and Successful Aging: Results from Transitional China.

[摘要] Recognizing the positive aspects of aging and exploring the ways older people age successfully has become an increasingly popular area of gerontology in recent years. Despite advances in successful aging research, there remain two important gaps in current research literature: First, most studies have been limited to the US or other developed Western countries. Relatively little is known concerning the ways many older people experience successful aging in developing countries. Second, the existing studies overemphasize the role of the individual in successful aging and largely ignore the role that social factors play in successful aging. This study seeks to address the gaps by establishing a macro-micro linkage in the understanding of successful aging and investigates the ways in which large-scale social changes influence the likelihood that Chinese older people will age successfully – over and above individual-level characteristics. I use individual-level data from 2000 Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS) and province-level data from administrative statistics to examine the effects of three dimensions of provincial-level market transition context – economic development, income inequality, and economic ownership restructuring – on individual successful aging in the transitional China. Two forms of market transition effects are examined: main effects of market transition context and interaction effects between market transition context and individual SES. Statistically, two-level random intercept logistic regression models are built for analyses. Findings reveal that objective measure successful aging is associated with both individual-level characteristics and province-level market transition characteristics including economic development, income inequality, and economic ownership restructuring; whereas subjective measure successful aging is only associated with individual-level characteristics. Moreover, the study finds that although economic development and economic ownership restructuring are positively associated with successful aging for all cases, the influences are not evenly distributed among groups: low SES older people benefit more from them than do high SES older adults.This study has significant theoretical and policy implications. On the theoretical side, this study is an important addition to the literature on the gerontological implications of market transition. From a policy perspective, this study calls for greater attention to the effects of social context on individual aging experiences.

[发布机构] University of Michigan

[效力级别] Market Transition

[关键词] Successful Aging;Market Transition;China;Political Science;Social Work;Social Sciences;Social Work and Political Science