- Title
- Gender, childhood and adult socioeconomic inequalities in functional disability among Chinese older adults
- Creator
- Zhong, Yaqin; Wang, Jian; Nicholas, Stephen
- Relation
- International Journal for Equity in Health Vol. 16, Issue 1, no. 165
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12939-017-0662-3
- Publisher
- BioMed Central
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2017
- Description
- Background: Gender difference and life-course socioeconomic inequalities in functional disability may exist among older adults. However, the association is less well understood among Chinese older population. The objective is to provide empirical evidences on this issue by exploring the association between gender, childhood and adult socioeconomic inequalities in functional disability. Methods: Data from the 2013 wave of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) was utilized. Functional disability was assessed by the activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL). Childhood socioeconomic status (SES) was measured by birthplace, father's education and occupation. Adult SES was measured in terms of education and household income. Multivariate logistic regressions were conducted to assess the association between gender, childhood and adult SES and functional disability. Results: Based on a sample of 18,448 older adults aged 45 years old and above, our results showed that the prevalence of ADL and IADL disability was higher among women than men, but gender difference disappeared after adult S ES and adult health were controlled. Harsh conditions during childhood were associated with functional disability but in multivariate analyses only father's education was associated with IADL disability (OR for no education = 1.198; 95% CI = 1.062-1.353). Current SES such as higher education and good economic situation are protective factors of functional disability. Conclusions: Childhood and adult SES were both related to functional disability among older adults. Our findings highlight the need for policies and programs aimed at decreasing social inequalities during childhood and early adulthood, which could reduce socioeconomic inequalities in functional disability in later life.
- Subject
- gender; socioeconomic status; inequality; functional disability; Sustainable Development Goals; SDG 10
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1351796
- Identifier
- uon:30775
- Identifier
- ISSN:1475-9276
- Rights
- © The Author(s). 2017 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities
Goal 1: No Poverty
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