Yahirun Jenjira J, Sheehan Connor M, Hayward Mark D
Center on the Family, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA
Population Research Center and Department of Sociology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
Res Aging. 2016 Apr;38(3):322-45. doi: 10.1177/0164027515620240.
This article asks how adult children's education influences older parents' physical health in Mexico, a context where older adults often lack access to institutional resources and rely on kin, primarily children, as a main source of support. Using logistic and negative binomial regression models and data from the first wave of the Mexican Health and Aging Study (N = 9,661), we find that parents whose children all completed high school are less likely to report any functional limitations as well as fewer limitations compared to parents with no children who completed high school. This association remains significant even after accounting for parent and offspring-level characteristics, including parents' income that accounts for children's financial transfers to parents. Future research should aim to understand the mechanisms that explain the association between adult children's education and changes to parents' health over time.
本文探讨在墨西哥,成年子女的教育程度如何影响老年父母的身体健康。在这种背景下,老年人往往无法获得机构资源,主要依靠亲属,尤其是子女,作为主要的支持来源。利用逻辑回归和负二项回归模型以及墨西哥健康与老龄化研究第一波的数据(N = 9661),我们发现,与没有子女完成高中学业的父母相比,子女都完成高中学业的父母报告有任何功能受限的可能性较小,且受限情况也较少。即使在考虑了父母和子女层面的特征,包括子女向父母的经济转移所构成的父母收入之后,这种关联仍然显著。未来的研究应旨在了解解释成年子女教育与父母健康随时间变化之间关联的机制。