Carmel Sara, Bernstein Judith H
Department of the Sociology of Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
Int J Aging Hum Dev. 2003;56(2):113-31. doi: 10.2190/87YH-45QN-48TY-9HN8.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which the well-established gender differences in physical and psychosocial well being in adulthood persist throughout different age groups of elderly persons, in order to support one of two opposing hypotheses: the convergence and divergence hypotheses. Data were collected by structured interviews from a random sample of 987 Israeli elderly (70+) in 1994. They were divided into four age groups for analysis: 70-74, 75-79, 80-84, and 85 and over. Findings indicate that in nearly every gender comparison by age, women score lower than men on indicators of physical and psychosocial well being, and in both genders increasing limitations on activities of daily living (ADL) were noticed. However, on all measures of physical health, except for ADL, the male advantage declines in the older age groups. This pattern is even stronger for the psychosocial indicators of well being, where no significant gender differences are found between the oldest groups. The trend of convergence among men and women thus occurs mainly in the age group of 85+. The results of multivariate analyses indicate that the sense of control of one's life is an important explanatory variable of satisfaction with life for men but not for women. The significant decline in the sense of control of men, aged 85 and over, is one of the main reasons for the more significant decline found in men's psychosocial well being in comparison to women. Our findings indicate that decline in health status, and other losses experienced with aging, affect more significantly men's sense of control over life, and therefore have a more deleterious effect on the psychosocial well being of men than on that of women. This conclusion, however, has to be supported by longitudinal studies.
本研究的目的是调查成年期已确立的身体和心理社会幸福感方面的性别差异在不同年龄组的老年人中持续存在的程度，以支持两种相反假设之一：趋同假设和分化假设。1994年，通过结构化访谈从987名以色列老年人（70岁以上）的随机样本中收集数据。他们被分为四个年龄组进行分析：70 - 74岁、75 - 79岁、80 - 84岁以及85岁及以上。研究结果表明，在几乎每一项按年龄进行的性别比较中，女性在身体和心理社会幸福感指标上的得分都低于男性，并且在两个性别中都注意到日常生活活动（ADL）的限制在增加。然而，在所有身体健康指标中，除了ADL，男性优势在老年组中有所下降。这种模式在心理社会幸福感指标方面更为明显，在最年长的组之间未发现显著的性别差异。因此，男性和女性之间的趋同趋势主要出现在85岁及以上的年龄组。多变量分析结果表明，对生活的掌控感是男性生活满意度的一个重要解释变量，但对女性不是。85岁及以上男性的掌控感显著下降，是男性心理社会幸福感相比女性下降更显著的主要原因之一。我们的研究结果表明，健康状况的下降以及衰老带来的其他损失，对男性生活掌控感的影响更为显著，因此对男性心理社会幸福感的有害影响比对女性更大。然而，这一结论必须得到纵向研究的支持。
