Age sequences of the elderly’ social network and its efficacies on well-being: an urban-rural comparison in China

BACKGROUND: Although social network is a known determinant of the elderly’s well-being, it is not clear, in urban-rural and age-comparison, what its structural characteristics are and how it works for well-being. The research aims to discuss the features of the elderly’s social network and the socia...

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Autores principales: Zheng, Zhenhua, Chen, Hong
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7526405/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32993525
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12877-020-01773-8
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author Zheng, Zhenhua
Chen, Hong
author_facet Zheng, Zhenhua
Chen, Hong
author_sort Zheng, Zhenhua
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Although social network is a known determinant of the elderly’s well-being, it is not clear, in urban-rural and age-comparison, what its structural characteristics are and how it works for well-being. The research aims to discuss the features of the elderly’s social network and the social network efficacies on the well-being of older adults in China’s urban and rural areas as well as revealing the urban-rural disparities among the elderly of different age groups. METHODS: In this study, descriptive statistical analysis and structural equation Modeling (SEM) were used to make a group comparison between the urban and rural elderly of different age groups. All data are quoted from 2014 China Longitudinal Aging Social Survey (CLASS). The survey adopted the multi-stage probability sampling method, targeting Chinese senior citizens aged 60 and above, the ultimate samples totaled 11,511. RESULTS: The social network of the elderly in China feature a “reverse structure” in age sequences: with ageing, family network of the elderly expand while their friend network shrink; also, the expansion scale of the rural elderly’s family network is significantly larger than that of the city’s while the shrinkage scale of their friend network is smaller compared with its urban counterpart. The effect of family network on the rural elderly’s well-being shows a remarkable increase with age. However, there is no noticeable change in urban elderly groups of different ages. CONCLUSION: The social network characteristics of the Chinese elderly are different between different age stages. Namely, the family network and the friend network have the “reverse structure “ in age sequences. Meanwhile, the family network and the friend network have different efficacies on the well-being of the elderly in China, and the differences between urban and rural areas are even more obvious. For rural elderly, family network has very important effects on their well-being. Moreover, With the increase of age, family network’s efficacies increase gradually. For urban elderly, comparatively, family network is just as important as friend network.
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spelling pubmed-75264052020-10-01 Age sequences of the elderly’ social network and its efficacies on well-being: an urban-rural comparison in China Zheng, Zhenhua Chen, Hong BMC Geriatr Research Article BACKGROUND: Although social network is a known determinant of the elderly’s well-being, it is not clear, in urban-rural and age-comparison, what its structural characteristics are and how it works for well-being. The research aims to discuss the features of the elderly’s social network and the social network efficacies on the well-being of older adults in China’s urban and rural areas as well as revealing the urban-rural disparities among the elderly of different age groups. METHODS: In this study, descriptive statistical analysis and structural equation Modeling (SEM) were used to make a group comparison between the urban and rural elderly of different age groups. All data are quoted from 2014 China Longitudinal Aging Social Survey (CLASS). The survey adopted the multi-stage probability sampling method, targeting Chinese senior citizens aged 60 and above, the ultimate samples totaled 11,511. RESULTS: The social network of the elderly in China feature a “reverse structure” in age sequences: with ageing, family network of the elderly expand while their friend network shrink; also, the expansion scale of the rural elderly’s family network is significantly larger than that of the city’s while the shrinkage scale of their friend network is smaller compared with its urban counterpart. The effect of family network on the rural elderly’s well-being shows a remarkable increase with age. However, there is no noticeable change in urban elderly groups of different ages. CONCLUSION: The social network characteristics of the Chinese elderly are different between different age stages. Namely, the family network and the friend network have the “reverse structure “ in age sequences. Meanwhile, the family network and the friend network have different efficacies on the well-being of the elderly in China, and the differences between urban and rural areas are even more obvious. For rural elderly, family network has very important effects on their well-being. Moreover, With the increase of age, family network’s efficacies increase gradually. For urban elderly, comparatively, family network is just as important as friend network. BioMed Central 2020-09-29 /pmc/articles/PMC7526405/ /pubmed/32993525 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12877-020-01773-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Zheng, Zhenhua
Chen, Hong
Age sequences of the elderly’ social network and its efficacies on well-being: an urban-rural comparison in China
title Age sequences of the elderly’ social network and its efficacies on well-being: an urban-rural comparison in China
title_full Age sequences of the elderly’ social network and its efficacies on well-being: an urban-rural comparison in China
title_fullStr Age sequences of the elderly’ social network and its efficacies on well-being: an urban-rural comparison in China
title_full_unstemmed Age sequences of the elderly’ social network and its efficacies on well-being: an urban-rural comparison in China
title_short Age sequences of the elderly’ social network and its efficacies on well-being: an urban-rural comparison in China
title_sort age sequences of the elderly’ social network and its efficacies on well-being: an urban-rural comparison in china
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7526405/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32993525
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12877-020-01773-8
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