A study on quality of life of the urban community elderly people

 

With the in-depth development of China's reform and opening-up, providing for the aged and taking care of them have gradually become grave problems in our country. The traditional mode of healthcare for the aged has been weakened,and the social old-age pension is also facing a predicament of funds shortage. Therefore, the community-level old-age service is the China's expedient choice in the transitional period, while improving the old citizens’ quality of life constitutes the essential objective of addressing the aging problem. Based on the database of China General Social Survey 2006 (CGSS 2006) as the information source, this research has discussed in detail both the status quo of current elderly people’s life quality and the influencing pathways of objective and subjective factors pertaining to their quality of life.

By means of statistical analysis, this study has shown that the old people’s quality of life has been influenced by individual characteristics, family economic conditions, the degree of life richness and the crisis consciousness. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) Marital status, political status and pension insurance significantly affect the old people’s sense of well-being; (2) Gender does not have obvious effects on quality of life, whilst higher education level does not guarantee the evident sense of happiness; (3) The family economic conditions of the old people markedly influence their subjective satisfaction towards everyday life; (4) There exist positive correlations between pairs of family economic conditions, the degree of life richness and the crisis consciousness; (5) The number of old people feeling strong sense of well-being is smaller than that of the aged who possess the weak sense of well-being, which reflects the fact that the status quo of elderly people’s life quality is not as good as expected.