Fischer Claude S, Beresford Lauren
Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley.
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2015 Jan;70(1):123-31. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbu057. Epub 2014 Jun 4.
This paper tests whether differences by gender and by educational attainment in contact with friends and family and in support expected from friends and family narrow or widen in late middle age.
The data are drawn from about 4,800 members of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Survey who answered questions about their frequency of contact with social ties and expectations of 3 kinds of help in both 1993, when they were in their early 50s, and again in 2004.
Using lagged dependent variable models, we find that between their 50s and 60s women's network advantages over men and college graduates' network advantages over high school graduates in frequency of social contact widened. The same was roughly true as well for expectations of social support, although here the divergences depended partly on the type of the support: Women gained relative to men in "talk" support and in help from nonkin if ill, but lost ground in financial support. The college-educated gained ground in all sorts of support from nonkin.
These results reinforce concern that late middle age is a period when men and the less educated become yet more disadvantaged in social support, making attention to connectedness yet more critical.
本文检验在接近中年后期时，在与朋友和家人的联系以及对朋友和家人支持的期望方面，性别差异和受教育程度差异是缩小还是扩大。
数据取自威斯康星纵向调查的约4800名成员，他们在1993年（当时他们50岁出头）回答了关于与社会关系的联系频率以及对三种帮助的期望的问题，2004年再次进行了回答。
使用滞后因变量模型，我们发现，在50多岁到60多岁之间，女性在社交联系频率上相对于男性的网络优势以及大学毕业生相对于高中毕业生的网络优势扩大了。在社会支持期望方面情况大致相同，不过这里的差异部分取决于支持的类型：女性在“交谈”支持和生病时从非亲属那里获得的帮助方面相对于男性有所增加，但在经济支持方面则有所下降。受过大学教育的人在从非亲属那里获得的各种支持方面有所增加。
这些结果强化了人们的担忧，即接近中年后期是一个男性和受教育程度较低者在社会支持方面变得更加不利的时期，这使得关注人际关系变得更加关键。
