Zhang Li, China Population and Development Research Center

Lu Jiehua , Beijing University

Zhang Zixin, China Population and Development Research Center

This study, based on the data of five phases ranging 14-year follow-up survey in Chinese longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS) and the multi-level age-period-cohort model (HAPC), tests the Chinese elders’ ideal living arrangements and its social change. The results show that the age effect makes the elders’ willing to live alone and to live in institutions changing by an inverted U-shaped curve, which mean the willing increases at first but decreases next, while the age effect makes the willing to live with adult children decrease first and increase next. The period effect cause a rising and then a high stay of the elders’ willing to live alone while a decline of the willing to live with children and then a slow rising since 2014. As the cohort gets younger, the probability that the elderly want to live alone slowly rises and then remains stable while the proportion of the elderly willing to live with their children has declined, but with a exceptional rising among the younger cohort. Further analysis found that the male and urban elders tend to live alone and in institutions more than the women and rural elders, the disabled and widowed elders prefer to live with their children. To make a conclusion, the ideal living arrangement of elders is changing with their age, period, and cohort. The findings implies the considerations of the elders age, period, cohort, gender, the urban-rural, marriage status in the making of the policies on the elder’s living arrangement to promote the realization of ideal living arrangements for the elderly.

This paper is collected in SOUTH CHINA POPULATION.

Keywords: Ideal living arrangement, Age effect, Period effect, Cohort effect, HAPC model