Kim Juyeon, Waite Linda J
Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
Res Aging. 2016 Feb;38(2):150-77. doi: 10.1177/0164027515581421. Epub 2015 Apr 21.
The availability of social and financial resources has profound implications for health and well-being in later life. Older adults often share resources with others who live with them, sometimes in households including relatives or friends. We examine differences in social support, social connections, money, and the household environment across types of living arrangements, develop hypotheses from two theoretical perspectives, one focusing on obligations toward kin, and one focused on social exchange within households, and test them using data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project. We find that availability of resources is not consistently associated with the presence of grandchildren and other young relatives, but often differs with presence of other adults. These findings suggest that a single type of resource tells us little about the distribution of the resources of older adults, and call on us to examine multiple resources simultaneously.
社会和经济资源的可获得性对晚年的健康和幸福有着深远影响。老年人常常与同住的其他人共享资源，有时是在包括亲属或朋友的家庭中。我们研究了不同居住安排类型在社会支持、社会联系、金钱和家庭环境方面的差异，从两个理论视角提出假设，一个关注对亲属的义务，另一个关注家庭内部的社会交换，并利用来自“全国社会生活、健康与老龄化项目”的数据对这些假设进行检验。我们发现，资源的可获得性与孙辈及其他年轻亲属的存在并非始终相关，但往往因其他成年人的存在而有所不同。这些发现表明，单一类型的资源并不能让我们充分了解老年人资源的分配情况，这就要求我们同时考察多种资源。
