Page 7 - IJPS-3-1

International Journal of Population Studies

RESEARCH ARTICLE
Exposure to urban life and mortality

risk among older adults in China

4
3
2
1*
Danan Gu , Qiushi Feng , Jessica M. Sautter and Li Qiu
1 United Nations Population Division, New York, NY, USA
2 Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore, Singapore
3 Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences, University of the Sciences,
Philadelphia, PA, USA
4 Independent Researcher, New York, NY, USA

Abstract: We examined whether exposure to urban environments was linked with
mortality in a longitudinal survey dataset of nearly 28,000 Chinese adults who were
65 years of age or older in the years 2002–2014. Urban life exposure was measured
by residential status at birth, current residential status, and urban-related primary
lifetime occupation, which generated eight different categories of urban life exposure:
no exposure, mid-life-only exposure, late-life-only exposure, mid-late-life exposure,
early-life-only exposure, early-mid-life exposure, early- & late-life exposure, and full
life exposure. We also included a measure of migration, whether the respondent lived
in the same county/city at birth and at first interview, to further classify these eight
categories. Overall, we found that when demographics were controlled for, compared
to those with no urban life exposure and no migration, mortality risk was lower for
older adults with mid-late life exposure with or without migration and for older adults
with full-life exposure with migration; mortality risk was higher for older adults with
early-life-only exposure. Once socioeconomic status, family/social support, health
ARTICLE INFO behaviors, and baseline health were simultaneously controlled for, only the higher
Received: August 23, 2016
Accepted: October 14 2016 mortality risk for older adults with early-life-only exposure was still significant. Our
Published Online: October 20, findings provided valuable information about how urban life exposure at different life
2016
*CORRESPONDING AUTHOR stages was associated with elderly mortality in China.
Danan Gu, United Nations Keywords: China; older adults; urban life exposure; mortality; rural; migration
Population Division, Two UN-
Plaza, DC2-1910, New York, NY
10017, USA
gudanan@yahoo.com 1 Introduction
Urbanization is associated with profound changes in population health that result
CITATION
Gu D, Feng Q, Sautter JM, et al. from changes in lifestyle, nutrition, ecological system, and socioeconomic conditions
(2017). Exposure to urban life (Popkin, 1999) as well as social networks (Xu, Li and Jiao, 2016). Current urban
and mortality risk among older residents in China tend to have higher prevalence rates of high fat diets, physical
adults in China. International
Journal of Population Studies, inactivity, obesity, and hypertension, as compared to their rural counterparts (Gong,
3(1): 1–21. Liang, Carlton, et al., 2012; Popkin and Du, 2003; Zhu, Chi and Sun, 2016). However,
doi: 10.18063/IJPS.2017.01.007.
death rates at all ages were lower in urban areas than in rural areas in the latest four
Copyright: © 2017 Danan Gu, censuses (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 1984; 1992; 2002; 2012), which is
Qiushi Feng, Jessica M. Sautter common in many other developing countries (Leon, 2008).
and Li Qiu. This is an Open
Access article distributed under A number of factors could help explain the urban health advantage in China, such
the terms of the Creative Com - as greater access to healthcare services, more socioeconomic resources, and better
mons Attribution-Non Commercial
4.0 Inter national License (http:// facilities and infrastructure such as safe water and easy transportation (Cai, Zhang, Ye,
creativecommons.org/licenses/ et al., 2010; Wang and Li, 2008; Zimmer, Kaneda and Spess, 2007; Zimmer, Kaneda,
by-nc/4.0/), permit ting all non-
commercial use, distribution, Tang, et al., 2010). One active research line of urban-rural health disparity in China
and reproduction in any medium, adopts a life course perspective and looks into the impact of earlier life exposure to
provided the original work is
properly cited. urban environments on health at later ages. Prior studies showed that older Chinese
International Journal of Population Studies 2017, Volume 3, Issue 1 1