Yang Fang
Department of Social Work, School of Sociology and Political Science, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China.
Aging Ment Health. 2021 Jul;25(7):1214-1223. doi: 10.1080/13607863.2020.1732293. Epub 2020 Feb 26.
Widowhood is a significant predictor of loneliness in older adults and research on the underlying mechanisms of this link using longitudinal data is limited. This study examined whether education would moderate the effect of widowhood on loneliness, and whether such a relationship would differ by gender among Chinese older adults.
A total of 2,704 older adults from the 2008 wave of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey were included. They were aged 65 years and above, were not lonely, and were married. Logistic regression models were applied to examine the interaction between widowhood, education, and gender on loneliness in the 2011 wave.
Widowhood was a significant predictor of loneliness and could increase the odds of becoming lonely by 193%. The interaction between widowhood and education was significant only in older women, not in older men. Literate older women reported lower loneliness than did their illiterate counterparts when they remained married during the follow-up. However, when their spouse passed away, literate women did not differ from their illiterate counterparts in loneliness.
This study revealed a gendered pattern in the interaction between widowhood and education on loneliness and demonstrated the complexity of the mechanisms. Furthermore, it highlighted the importance of considering the role of education and gender simultaneously in a Chinese context.
丧偶是老年人孤独感的重要预测因素，而利用纵向数据对这种关联的潜在机制进行的研究有限。本研究考察了教育程度是否会调节丧偶对孤独感的影响，以及在中国老年人中这种关系是否会因性别而异。
纳入了2008年中国健康与养老追踪调查中的2704名老年人。他们年龄在65岁及以上，不感到孤独，且已婚。应用逻辑回归模型来考察2011年调查中丧偶、教育程度和性别对孤独感的交互作用。
丧偶是孤独感的显著预测因素，可使感到孤独的几率增加193%。丧偶与教育程度的交互作用仅在老年女性中显著，在老年男性中不显著。在随访期间仍处于婚姻状态时，有文化的老年女性报告的孤独感低于文盲老年女性。然而，当她们的配偶去世时，有文化的女性在孤独感方面与文盲女性没有差异。
本研究揭示了丧偶与教育程度对孤独感交互作用中的性别模式，并证明了机制的复杂性。此外，它强调了在中国背景下同时考虑教育程度和性别的作用的重要性。
