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Informal Social Support and Older Persons’ Psychological Well-Being in Hong Kong

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Abstract

This paper focuses on the importance and the effectiveness of various types of informal support for older persons’ psychological well-being. It examines the effects of objective measures of informal support (such as size of social networks and frequency of contact) and subjective measures (such as satisfaction with the support received) on psychological well-being of older occupants in different household circumstances (i.e.,living alone, with spouse or relatives, in old urban areas or new towns, in private or public housing). Data were collected from face-to-face interviews with a sample of 518 older persons (224 males, 294 females) aged 60 and over, systematically drawn from a GIS-derived framework of housing districts in old urban areas and new towns in Hong Kong. The results show that both objective and subjective measures of informal support were related to older persons’ psychological well-being, but subjective measures of informal support (specifically satisfaction with support received from family members) were found to be more important predictors of psychological well-being. Furthermore, the effects of size of social network on psychological well-being were stronger for older persons who lived alone than for those who lived with a spouse or relatives. The results also show that persons who lived in the old urban areas received more support than did their counterparts in the new towns and older persons who lived in public housing received more objective informal support than those who lived in private housing. The implications of the findings for policy towards older persons in Hong Kong and similar Asia-Pacific societies are discussed.

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Notes

  1. Hong Kong comprises the New Territories and the main urban areas of Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and New Kowloon. In the past, most urban development was concentrated in the main urban areas, which are now effectively the old urban areas of the city. New towns were first developed in the former rural areas of the New Territories in the 1950s with another six being developed from the late 1970s. There are at present eight new towns (Phillips and Yeh 1987; Yeh 2003).

  2. A detailed breakdown of relevant descriptives are shown in full in Phillips et al. (2005).

  3. The two old urban areas are Sham Shui Po and Kwun Tong in New Kowloon, and the two new towns are Tuen Mun and Tai Po in the New Territories.

  4. The census data were stored on CD-ROM for analysis at the Centre of Urban Planning and Environmental Management, The University of Hong Kong.

  5. According to the Hong Kong Census 2001, the average monthly income from main employment of the working population was just under HKD$10,000 (Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong 2001).

  6. Low income here is not the same as the sampling criteria.

  7. New and Old here are different from new town and old urban areas in first stage sampling procedure.

  8. Buildings less than 5 years old were not used in the study as it was felt that residents might still be experiencing adjustment issues which could distort the perception of the respondents of the environment. It was felt that a period of five years or more was reasonable for residents to have adjusted to a new environment, even if they were new to the area, such as moving from the old urban areas to the new towns under the various urban renewal programmes of the Hong Kong government.

  9. This included: districts, housing type, gender, age, marital status, education, and income

  10. For instance, if SIZE was being tested, the variables in the previous step (prior to the demographic variables at the first step) included FREQ, QUAL, SIZE × FREQ, and SIZE × QUAL.

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Acknowledgement

This research reported in this paper was supported by the University Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. LU3018/01H). The assistance of government officers, members of NGOs and universities in Hong Kong, who formed a steering group to advise the project’s development and dissemination of findings, is also acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology and Social Policy, Lingnan University, 8 Castle Peak Road, Tuen Mun, New Territories, Hong Kong SAR, China

    David R. Phillips, Oi Ling Siu & Kevin H. C. Cheng

  2. Centre for Urban Planning and Environmental Management, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Anthony G. O. Yeh

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  1. David R. Phillips
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  2. Oi Ling Siu
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  3. Anthony G. O. Yeh
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Correspondence to David R. Phillips.

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Phillips, D.R., Siu, O.L., Yeh, A.G.O. et al. Informal Social Support and Older Persons’ Psychological Well-Being in Hong Kong. J Cross Cult Gerontol 23, 39–55 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10823-007-9056-0

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