Volunteering, Social Trust and Life Satisfaction of the Young-Old in China: Based on Urban-Rural Differences

Xuanyu Hu and Lili Xie ()
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Xuanyu Hu: School of Social Research, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China
Lili Xie: School of Social Research, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China

Social Sciences, 2025, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-19

Abstract: With the increasingly severe situation of population aging in China, how to improve the well-being of older adults is an important topic of social discussion. However, the situation of older adults in urban and rural China greatly differs. Current research has focused on older people in urban areas, with insufficient attention paid to the urban-rural differences in older groups. At the same time, volunteering is considered to be a significant strategy to improve the lives of older adults, and the young-old are the main participants in volunteer activities, but the impact and influence mechanism of volunteering on life satisfaction among urban and rural young-old have yet to be clarified. Therefore, the goal of this study is to analyze the influence of volunteering on the lives of the young-old in a more comprehensive way, mainly exploring three questions: (1) The impact of volunteering on life satisfaction of the young-old. (2) The influence mechanism of volunteering on their life satisfaction. (3) The urban-rural differences in the impact and influence mechanism. To answer the above questions, this study was conducted from the perspective of urban-rural differences, based on Activity Theory and Social Capital Theory, and adopted quantitative research methods, including multiple linear regression and structural equation models. Secondary data, which comes from the Chinese Social Survey in 2021, was used in this study, and we chose the Chinese older adults aged 55–70 years old as the object of study. The results show that volunteering positively correlates with life satisfaction, while social trust is a significant positive mediating mechanism. Furthermore, the rural young-old benefit more from volunteering. The findings imply that it is of great significance to appropriately encourage the young-old to participate in volunteer activities, formulate targeted policies for different older people based on urban-rural differences, and gradually break the obstacles of the urban-rural dual system comprehensively.

Keywords: volunteering; life satisfaction; social trust; the young-old (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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