Parent-Child Relationships and Aging Parents' Sleep Quality: A Comparison of One-Child and Multiple-Children Families in China

Spousal health, marital satisfaction, and older Chinese adults' sleep: The moderating role of psychological resilience

PURPOSES

This study aims to examine the moderating role of psychological resilience in the association between two common marital relationship stressors (poor spousal health and low marital satisfaction) and sleep (sleep quality and sleep duration) among older adults in China.

METHODS

This study used four waves of data from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (2008-2018) (N = 8769), and mixed-effects logistic models were used.

RESULTS

Poor spousal health and low marital satisfaction were independently associated with increased odds of poor sleep quality and short sleep duration, and decreased odds of long sleep duration. Greater psychological resilience was associated with increased odds of good sleep quality and decreased odds of short sleep duration, but had no significant effect on long sleep duration. In addition, psychological resilience moderated the odds of poor spousal health and low marital satisfaction on the risk of short sleep duration among older Chinese adults.

CONCLUSION

The findings provide novel evidence for the increased importance of marital stress and psychological resilience on sleep health in later life. Policy interventions are needed to support vulnerable older adults who experience poor spousal health and/or low marital satisfaction.

Assessing the effect of health status on multidimensional poverty among older adults: the Chinese longitudinal healthy longevity survey

Background

This study aimed to explore the association between health status (physical, mental, and self-rated health) and multidimensional poverty (subjective and objective poverty) in older adults.

Method

A panel binary logit regression approach was applied to four waves of CLHLS data (2008, 2011, 2014, and 2018). In total,1,445 individuals were included after data cleaning.

Results

The mean values and proportion of physical, mental, and self-rated health were 5.73 (87.42%), 0.93 (93.06%), and 3.46 (86.7%), respectively, and mean values and proportion of subjective and objective poverty were 0.19 (18.51%) and 0.21(21.4%). In addition, physical, mental, and self-rated health were all found to be associated with subjective poverty among older adults (r = -0.181, r = -0.630, r = -0.321, p < 0.05), that is, the better the physical, mental, and self-rated health, the lower the probability of subjective poverty. A comparable connection between self-rated health and objective poverty also exists (r = -0.157, p < 0.05). Furthermore, medical expenditure played a mediation role in the association between the health status and poverty of older adults.

Conclusion

In order to effectively alleviate the poverty of older adults, strategies should be taken to improve the health level of older adults, especially the physical and mental health of high-aged older adults, and the self-rated health of middle-aged older adults. Furthermore, social security and pensions should be further developed to adequately reimburse medical expenditures.

Separated kin: location of multiple children and mental health trajectories of older parents in rural China

OBJECTIVE

This study examines the longitudinal association between the location of multiple children and depressive symptoms of older parents in rural China, where massive rural-to-urban migration has profoundly altered the family life of the aging population.

METHODS

Using seven waves of panel data from the Longitudinal Study of Older Adults in Anhui Province (2001-2018, N = 8,253) and multilevel growth curve models, this study compares mental health trajectories of old parents across different compositions of local and migrant children over an 18-year time period.

RESULTS

The results show that older parents with a greater share of adult children who had migrated away not only scored worse mental health on average, but also experienced a more rapid increase in depressive symptoms across ages, after accounting for other covariates. Further, older adults who had their most children migrated away for a longer period of time suffered from the steeper rate of increase in depressive symptoms as they got older.

CONCLUSIONS

We suggest that it is not the geographic locality of a single child but the location of multiple children that matters for parental mental health in later life.

Stressful life events and subjectively rated sleep quality among older adults in China: the roles of positive and negative attitudes towards ageing

Sleep is an integral part of individuals' health and wellbeing. Despite evidence showing that social stressors are important contributors to older adults' sleep problems, how the accumulative stressful life events (SLEs) and ageing attitudes independently and jointly affect sleep quality among older adults in developing countries remains unclear. This study examined the effects of SLEs on subjectively rated sleep quality among older adults in China, and explored the potential mediating and moderating roles of positive and negative ageing attitudes on the above association. Using data from the 2014 China Longitudinal Ageing Social Survey, we had complete data for 7,780 older adults aged 60 and older. We employed logistic regression models and the Karlson–Holm–Breen decomposition method. Our findings indicated that SLEs significantly increased the risk of poor sleep quality, especially for those who had experienced two or more SLEs during the past year. Positive ageing attitudes were associated with lower odds of poor sleep quality, whereas negative ageing attitudes were related to higher odds of poor sleep quality. Moreover, the mediation analyses suggested that SLEs were associated with poor sleep quality via negative ageing attitudes. The moderating effects further documented that higher levels of positive ageing attitudes can significantly attenuate the deleterious impact of SLEs on sleep quality. The findings highlight the significance of SLEs for older adults' sleep quality and shed light on the importance of ageing attitudes to improve older adults' sleep in China as well as other low- and middle-income countries, where the social safety nets are still underdeveloped.

What Could Interfere with a Good Night's Sleep? The Risks of Social Isolation, Poor Physical and Psychological Health among Older Adults in China

This study provides one of the first population-based investigations of the longitudinal association between social isolation and sleep difficulty among older adults in China. We analyzed three waves of longitudinal data from the China Longitudinal Aging Social Survey (2014-2018), in which 8456 respondents contributed 16,156 person-year observations. Results from multilevel logistic regression models showed that social isolation was related to a higher risk of sleep difficulty. We also found that socially isolated older adults were more likely to report higher levels of depressive symptoms, a greater prevalence of loneliness and pain, and more chronic diseases compared to their socially integrated counterparts, which in turn increased their risks of sleep difficulty. Moreover, socially isolated older adults with chronic diseases were particularly vulnerable to the risk of sleep difficulty. These findings provide helpful guidance for policymakers and practitioners to design effective intervention strategies to help older adults with sleep problems.