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Childlessness, Psychological Well-being, and Life Satisfaction Among the Elderly in China

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Abstract

This paper examines the effects of childlessness on the well-being of persons aged 65 and above in China. It is based on an application of ordered-logit regression in the analysis of the data from the 2002 wave of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS) conducted in 22 provinces of China (N = 13,447). It compares parents with the childless elderly, focusing on three dimensions of psychological well-being, namely feelings of anxiety, loneliness, and uselessness, and on life satisfaction. The findings include the following. First, with control of social demographic variables of age, gender and education, childlessness is significantly associated with life satisfaction, feeling of anxiety and loneliness, but not feeling of uselessness. The childless elderly are less satisfied with their lives and feel more anxious and lonely than do parents, but they do not necessarily feel significantly more useless. Second, when controlled with social-demographic variables and additional socioeconomic variables of residence, living arrangement, availability of pension and medical services, childlessness is no longer significantly related to anxiety and loneliness, and it is related at only a marginally-significant level to life satisfaction. Third, individual education, place of residence, living arrangements, economic security and access to medical services are consistently related to life satisfaction and psychological well-being among the elderly. We conclude that providing social investments in education in early life and economic security and medical insurance in later life for both the childless and parents are crucial for improving individual psychological well-being and life satisfaction for the elderly.

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Notes

  1. It should be noted that the proportions of persons remaining childless in various Western Countries, as would occur elsewhere, change over time, and there are differences across various social groups (see Morgan 1991; Poston and Gu 1983). For a discussion of levels of childlessness in developing societies, readers may refer to Kreager and Schroder-Butterfill (2005).

  2. Or perhaps parents with sons who have personal problems may feel more depressed, as shown in studies in the West (e.g., Connidis and McMullin 1993; for review, see Koropeckyj-Cox 2002).

  3. In this regard, it seems that urban mainland China is different from Hong Kong, where adult sons provide financial as well as emotional support to their elderly parents, no less than their female counterparts (Kwok 2006).

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Acknowledgement

Support for this research was provided by Connaught New Staff Matching Grant, University of Toronto. The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments of two referees and the associate journal editor Robert Schrauf.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Toronto at Mississauga, 3359 Mississauga R.N., Mississauga, ON, L5L 1C6, Canada

    Weiguo Zhang

  2. University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada

    Guiping Liu

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  1. Weiguo Zhang
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Correspondence to Weiguo Zhang.

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Zhang, W., Liu, G. Childlessness, Psychological Well-being, and Life Satisfaction Among the Elderly in China. J Cross Cult Gerontol 22, 185–203 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10823-007-9037-3

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