Older Parents Benefit More in Health Outcome From Daughters' Than Sons' Emotional Care in China.
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To examine whether older parents in China would benefit more from daughters'
care than from sons' emotional care. METHOD: Analysis of the unique data sets of the
Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey conducted in 2002, 2005, and 2008-2009
in 22 provinces. RESULTS: As compared with having son(s), having daughter(s) is significantly
more beneficial at older ages in China, with regard to maintaining higher cognitive
capacity and reducing mortality risk. Such daughter advantages in providing emotional
care to older parents are more profound among the oldest-old aged 80+ as compared
with the young-old aged 65 to 79 and surprisingly more profound in rural areas as
compared with urban areas, even though son preference is much more common among rural
residents. DISCUSSION: We describe how educational campaigns aimed at informing the
public about the benefits of daughter(s) for older parents' health outcome could help
promote gender equality and reduce traditional son preference, especially in rural
China.
Type
Journal articlePermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/14644Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1177/0898264315620591Publication Info
Zeng, Yi; Brasher, Melanie Sereny; Gu, Danan; & Vaupel, James W (2016). Older Parents Benefit More in Health Outcome From Daughters' Than Sons' Emotional
Care in China. J Aging Health, 28(8). pp. 1426-1447. 10.1177/0898264315620591. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/14644.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
James Walton Vaupel
Research Professor Emeritus in the Sanford School of Public Policy
This author no longer has a Scholars@Duke profile, so the information shown here reflects
their Duke status at the time this item was deposited.
Yi Zeng
Professor in Medicine
(1) Socioeconomic, behavior, environmental and genetic determinants of healthy aging
and healthy longevity; (2) Factors related to elderly disability and mental health;
(3) Methods of family households and elderly living arrangements forecasting/analysis
and their applications in health services and socioeconomic planning, and market studies;
(4) Policy analysis in population aging, social welfare, retirement, and fertility
transitions.
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