LIVING ARRANGEMENT AND TIME ASSISTANCE TO NON-CO-RESIDENT ELDERLY PARENTS IN CHINA

摘要

Family eldercare provided by children in China is facing more and more challenges nowadays as an increasing proportion of adults and elderly parents are living independently. Using data from the 2013 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, we firstly test the mediation effect of norms in predicting actual living arrangement. Next, we examine how time assistance to elderly parents living alone is related to children’s geographic proximity, children’s competing roles, type of relationship to parent, and several family characteristics including parent’s severity of need and sibship size. We use generalized linear models with random effects to take into account the “nesting” of parents within children. Results confirm that effects of education and economic resource in predicting living arrangement are significantly mediated by norms. Parent’s need, sib-ship size, geographic proximity and relationship type have significant effects on time assistance. The finding helps to understand the new patterns of eldercare in China as a consequence of arising neo-familism and individualization. Understanding such mechanism helps to impact China’s future policy formulation, which should satisfy the needs of both individuals and elderly parents to better maintain the crucial role of family in eldercare provision.