Effects of living arrangements of the urban elderly on their subjective wellbeing: A comparison between Korea and China

This research is to find the effects of living arrangements of urban elderly on their subjective wellbeing, comparing Incheon, South Korea (Korea hereafter) with Shandong, China. Subjective well-being includes degree of loneliness, and satisfaction with concept of filial piety, children’s supports, and life in general asked using printed questionnaire for total 1904 elderly population of 65 and over of age in both countries. The traditional Confucian belief that living arrangements is an essential condition for subjective wellbeing of older parents is not supported by the Chinese case, but partially supported by the Korean case. Although the general life-satisfaction is not significantly affected by the forms of living arrangement, the degree of loneliness, satisfaction with children’s filial piety toward them, satisfaction with children’s supports are significantly affected by the form of living arrangement for Korean, while none of the three areas is affected for Chinese. Nevertheless, the subjective wellbeing of elderly in both countries is commonly affected, sometimes more affected by other factors than living arrangement, particularly “marital status” and “health” of elderly. The elderly living alone as well as who are unhealthy seem to need more attention from family in both countries. With all these similarities and differences, however, the levels of the subjective wellbeing of Chinese elderly are higher in all of the four areas of the wellbeing than that of Korean. The reasons for the differences may have a relation with the wellbeing-friendly conditions of Chinese, such as legalized filial obligation for parents, the higher proportion of living with spouse only, elderly’ residence closer to children’s, and more frequent meeting and communication with children. It implies that not only financial support but also physical care and emotional supports of family are still possible and necessary, in spite of changing condition of living arrangement, especially with higher proportion of elderly’ living apart from children and the higher preference for the separate arrangement