Li Yang, Guo Miao
School of Economics, University of Nottingham Ningbo China, China.
College of Finance and Statistics, Hunan University, China.
SSM Popul Health. 2022 Apr 12;18:101096. doi: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2022.101096. eCollection 2022 Jun.
Eldercare has become a major challenge in China. As intergenerational support from children remains the primary source of caregiving, this paper investigates the impact of such support on parents' health outcomes. Exploiting data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), we adopt the Heckman selection model and ordered probit model with instrumental variables, the firstborn son and firstborn daughter, to control for the potential endogeneity existing between intergenerational support and parents' health outcomes. Our results suggest that intergenerational support, including emotional and financial support, is effective in improving parental health status, including physical and psychological well-being and performance of activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL). Emotional support also improves parental cognition. Children have trade-offs between emotional and financial support. Our findings provide insight into more efficient healthcare for the elderly.
老年护理在中国已成为一项重大挑战。由于来自子女的代际支持仍是主要的照料来源，本文研究了这种支持对父母健康状况的影响。利用中国健康与养老追踪调查（CHARLS）的数据，我们采用了Heckman选择模型和带有工具变量（长子和长女）的有序Probit模型，以控制代际支持与父母健康状况之间潜在的内生性。我们的结果表明，包括情感和经济支持在内的代际支持，在改善父母健康状况方面是有效的，包括身体和心理健康以及日常生活活动（ADL）和工具性日常生活活动（IADL）的表现。情感支持也能改善父母的认知。子女在情感和经济支持之间存在权衡。我们的研究结果为更有效的老年人医疗保健提供了见解。
