Living arrangements of the elderly: A new perspective from choice constraints in China

Ying Fan, Shuai Fang and Zan Yang

China Economic Review, 2018, vol. 50, issue C, 101-116

Abstract: As the foundation of elderly care, living arrangements are closely connected with the physical and psychological well-being of the elderly and the social resources allocation. The objective of this study is to understand the constraints between the preferred and actual choices of elderly living arrangements in China. We first establish a standardized theoretical model and derive two hypotheses on choice constraints. Based on the CHARLS database, we empirically test the theoretical hypotheses based on multiple-step empirical tests. Our findings are as follows. 1) The correlation between elderly income and the likelihood of living with their children is nonlinear: when the elderly prefers to live apart, their higher absolute income provides a greater likelihood that they can do so, and when they prefer to live with their children, the relative income of the elderly and their children are important in the likelihood of living together. 2) The poorer the health status of the elderly, the greater likelihood that they live with their children, particularly if they have daughters. The results are robust after controlling for the potential endogeneity issue, the passive choice situation, and volatility in preference.

Keywords: Elderly living arrangement; Preference; Choice constraint, China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 J14 R21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043951X18300427
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:chieco:v:50:y:2018:i:c:p:101-116

DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2018.04.001

Access Statistics for this article

China Economic Review is currently edited by B.M. Fleisher, K. X. D. Huang, M.E. Lovely, Y. Wen, X. Zhang and X. Zhu

More articles in China Economic Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().