Ren Kang, Lan Jing, Ge Lingyu, Zhou Lei
College of Public Administration, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China.
Front Public Health. 2025 Apr 17;13:1467463. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1467463. eCollection 2025.
This paper examines the effects of intergenerational support on the mental health of older adults and elucidates the mechanisms underlying these effects.
Utilizing data from the 2020 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), We examine the effects of different dimensions of intergenerational support on the positive and negative emotions of older adults based on the main effect model and the buffer model. Then we employ instrumental variable methods to address key endogeneity concerns. The indirect effect mechanism through which children's economic support influences the mental health of the older adults was examined using a mediation model. In addition, robustness tests and heterogeneity analyses were conducted.
The intergenerational support from children has a significant impact on the mental health of older adults. All three types of support contribute to the positive emotions of older adults. In terms of the impact on negative emotions, the regression coefficients for financial support and emotional support are significantly negative, while the direction of the effect of caregiving support is positive. Additionally, financial support promotes the mental health of the older adults by influencing their social participation. Heterogeneity analysis further indicates that the impact of intergenerational support varies across different subpopulations, with rural older adults particularly benefiting from emotional support.
Our findings reveal that financial support from adult children enhances older adults' mental health by improving positive emotions and reducing negative emotions, and emotional support from children has a similar effect. However, while caregiving by adult children significantly boosts positive emotions among older adults, long-term caregiving also engenders feelings of guilt, which in turn exacerbates negative emotions and diminishes overall mental health. Our study emphasizes the need to consider Filial Piety Culture, social care support and social participation in order to improve older adults' mental health.
本文探讨代际支持对老年人心理健康的影响，并阐明这些影响背后的机制。
利用2020年中国健康与养老追踪调查（CHARLS）的数据，我们基于主效应模型和缓冲模型，研究代际支持不同维度对老年人积极情绪和消极情绪的影响。然后我们采用工具变量法来解决关键的内生性问题。使用中介模型检验了子女经济支持影响老年人心理健康的间接效应机制。此外，还进行了稳健性检验和异质性分析。
子女的代际支持对老年人的心理健康有显著影响。所有三种类型的支持都有助于老年人产生积极情绪。在对消极情绪的影响方面，经济支持和情感支持的回归系数显著为负，而照料支持的影响方向为正。此外，经济支持通过影响老年人的社会参与来促进其心理健康。异质性分析进一步表明，代际支持的影响在不同亚群体中存在差异，农村老年人尤其从情感支持中受益。
我们的研究结果表明，成年子女的经济支持通过改善积极情绪和减少消极情绪来增强老年人的心理健康，子女的情感支持也有类似效果。然而，虽然成年子女的照料显著提高了老年人的积极情绪，但长期照料也会产生内疚感，进而加剧消极情绪并降低整体心理健康水平。我们的研究强调，为了改善老年人的心理健康，需要考虑孝道文化、社会照料支持和社会参与。
