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Living Arrangement Concordance and its Association with Self-Rated Health Among Institutionalized and Community-Residing Older Adults in China

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Abstract

Although many studies look at the relationship between living arrangement and health among older adults, very little research takes seniors’ preferred living arrangements into account. This paper uses data from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS) to examine what factors are associated with concordance between actual and preferred living arrangements for both institutionalized and community-residing Chinese seniors, and to investigate associations between living arrangement concordance and self-rated health. Our analyses show that economic independence is negatively associated with living arrangement concordance among institutionalized older adults (net of other factors), while being older, female, minority ethnicity, having higher SES, and being unmarried are positively associated with living arrangement concordance among communityresiding seniors. For both institutionalized and community-residing older adults, living arrangement concordance increases the likelihood of rating self-rated health as good, with concordance having a greater impact on health for institutionalized elders (odds-ratios of 1.67–1.93) than for communityresiding elders (odds-ratios of 1.12).

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  1. Department of Sociology, Duke University, Box 90088, Durham, NC, 27701, USA

    Melanie D. Sereny

  2. Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA

    Danan Gu

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  1. Melanie D. Sereny
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Sereny, M.D., Gu, D. Living Arrangement Concordance and its Association with Self-Rated Health Among Institutionalized and Community-Residing Older Adults in China. J Cross Cult Gerontol 26, 239–259 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10823-011-9145-y

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