Page 104 - IJPS-3-1

Intergenerational support among widowed older adults in China

2 Materials and Methods

2.1 Data

The data come from the third wave of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity
Survey (2002 CLHLS). Started in 1998, the CLHLS was fielded in a randomly selected
half of the counties/cities in 22 out of 31 provinces in China. The surveyed areas
covered about 85% of the total Chinese population. Local aging committees provided
name lists of centenarians in randomly selected counties/cities, including persons
residing in institutions. For each centenarian with a pre-designated random code, one
nearby octogenarian and one nearby nonagenarian with pre-designated age and sex
were interviewed. The term “nearby” typically indicates the same village or the same
street, if applicable, or the same town, county, or city. The aim of this special sampling
procedure was to have comparable numbers of randomly selected male and female
octogenarians and nonagenarians at each age from 80 to 99. In the third wave, sample
subjects were extended to include the individuals ages 65 to 79 as a comparison with
the oldest old. The procedure for sampling the young-old is similar to the process used
for those ages 80 to 99. A more detailed description of the sampling design and data
quality of the CLHLS appears elsewhere (Gu, 2008).
In total, the 2002 wave comprised 16,064 respondents. This study focused on
widowed respondents aged 65 to 105 in 2002 based on self-reports of current marital
status (N = 10,511). Those who reported being younger than 65 or older than 105 were
excluded, either because they were out of the sampling frame or there was insufficient
information to validate their extremely old ages (Gu, 2008). We did not utilize the
longitudinal follow-ups after 2002 because there are some important changes in
the intergenerational support questions, making it difficult to examine changes in
intergenerational assistance over time. For example, for the emotional support question
asked in 2002, out of 10 categories, respondents can pick only one type of providers
(e.g., sons and daughters-in-law), whereas in 2005, respondents were allowed to
choose up to three providers. Another important change is that for those who needed
help with Activities of Daily Living (ADLs), the major caregiver for each type of ADL
limitations was asked in 2002, but only the major caregiver for all six ADL limitations
combined was asked in 2005 and onward.

2.2 Measures
We examined four types of intergenerational support: (a) net financial transfers
between adult children and widowed older adults, (b) sick care, (c) emotional support,
and (d) parent-child coresidence. Information about financial transfers (in cash and
in kind) between adult children and their widowed parents in 2001 was collected.
We followed the practice of Xie and Zhu (2009) and created an indicator that equals
1 if the net flow from adult children to parents is positive, and 0 otherwise. We also
examined the determinants of the amount of net financial transfers. As the distribution
of the net financial transfers was skewed, we used the natural logarithm for the
dependent variable in the multivariate analysis. Emotional support was assessed with
the following question: “To whom do you talk first when you need to share your
thoughts and feelings?”; whereas sick care was gauged by the following question: “Who
takes care of you when you are sick?” The response categories for these two questions
were: sons and daughters-in-law; daughters and sons-in-law; son and daughter;
grandchildren and grandchildren-in-law; other relatives; friends or neighbors; social
workers; domestic workers; and nobody. A dichotomous measure was created (= 1, if
adult children/children-in-law or grandchildren/grandchildren-in-law was mentioned,
and = 0 otherwise). Parent-child coresidence consisted of three categories: living with
children and/or grandchildren, living in institutions, and living alone or with others (e.g.,
siblings, parents, or others). We combined living alone and living with others because
a very small number of widowed older adults living with others, which prevents us
from conducting a separate analysis.

98 International Journal of Population Studies 2017, Volume 3, Issue 1