Gender disparities in health and well-being among older adults in China

Abstract

Based on data from the 2008–2018 Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey, this study uses multiple regression models to investigate the gender disparities in health and well-being among older adults in China. Women are found to have severe disadvantages in health, reflected in more chronic diseases, higher disability levels, lower physical and cognitive functions than men. Although older Chinese females are more likely to have good life satisfaction than their male counterparts, they are experiencing significantly higher negative affect than males. These results are further verified robust, providing practical policy implications of improving gender equalities in older adults.

Keywords:

• Aging
• China
• gender
• health
• well-being

Acknowledgements

The Author Thanks Anonymous Reviewers And The Editors For Their Constructive Feedback On An Earlier Draft Of This Article. The Author Is Grateful To The Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS) Team For Providing Data.

Ethics declarations

The CLHLS study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Peking University (IRB00001052–13074), and all participants or their proxy respondents provided written informed consent.

Data availability statement

The data sets for this study are from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS). Researchers who are interested in using the CLHLS data will be provided freely after signing the data use agreement.

Code availability

All analyses were conducted using Stata 15. The codes are available upon request.