THE IMPACT OF FEAR OF DEPENDENCY LIFE-SPACE AND HEALTH ON LIFE SATISFACTION IN MID-TO-LATE LIFE

摘要

This study explores how fear of dependency influences perceived life satisfaction among a sample of American older adults. Fear of dependency is a novel concept that describes peoples’ willingness to receive help from others. It is important to a discussion of aging because Americans view independence as essential to well-being. Fear of dependency has been found to contribute to depression in older adults (Adams-Price & Peterson, 2017). We hypothesized that it is also related to self-restriction of activities and mobility indicated by a measure of life space. We use data from an Amazon MTurk study of 314 Americans over age 50. Age 50 was chosen as the age cutoff because participants, while not yet old, are old enough to have started anticipating their own aging. Participants completed a measure of life satisfaction, a modified version of the Life-Space Inventory, a measure of one’s movement in the world, and a measure of self-rated health. Initial regression results indicate that fear of dependency is a significant predictor of life satisfaction, with a greater fear of dependency resulting in lower life satisfaction. These results hold, even when controlling for age, gender, self-rated health, and life space. Life space, fear of dependency and controls account for 26% of the variability in life satisfaction. Understanding what impacts older adults life satisfaction is an important area of study. This work adds to our understanding of what influences high life satisfaction, which has been a shown to have a strong relationship to longevity (Diener & Chan, 2011).