Intergenerational Support Provided By Middle Aged Adults And Its Impact On Their Own Health

In the era of rapid population aging,how to realize the elderly to do their own work and provide for the elderly is an important issue facing the current society.With the development of social economy,the content and essence of intergenerational relations in Chinese families have changed,and the desire of adult children to seek help from middle-aged and elderly parents has become more urgent.On the one hand,in the face of rapidly growing housing prices and living costs,adult children have become more dependent on their parents financially;On the other hand,the increased participation of the female population in the workforce,the increase in two-income families,the adjustment of birth policies,as well as the adjustment of maternity policies and the inadequacy of childcare services,have greatly increased the probability of the need for middle-aged and older adults to provide life support for adult children.In the face of the needs of adult children’s economic and living support,the contradiction between middle-aged and elderly people should give help,or should they pursue more leisure and better living standards,this contradiction has become more and more prominent.The impact of intergenerational support provided by middle-aged and elderly people for adult children on their own health has gradually aroused widespread concern and concern in society.This study takes the development of traditional intergenerational support under the modern economic model as the background,and based on data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study(CHARLS)database in 2015 and 2018,by constructing a composite health measure Frailty index(FI),using the basic OLS regression model is used to estimate the endogeneity problems in the research,and the influence of intergenerational support provided by middle-aged and elderly people to their adult children on the health level of middle-aged and elderly people is investigated.Inter-segment differences,and whether the intergenerational support provided by middle-aged and and through what mechanisms of influence the intergenerational support provided by middle-aged and older adults works.The results show that providing financial support and living support for adult children by middle-aged and elderly people can help improve their own health and promote their own physical and mental well-being,and the conclusion still holds after the robustness test.This study also found that there were urban-rural,gender,and agegroup differences in the impact of intergenerational support provided to middle-aged and older adults on their own health.The impact of instrumental support provided on the health of middle-aged and older adults in urban areas was greater than that of middle-aged and older adults in rural areas.The provision of financial support was only significantly associated with the level of health of rural middle-aged and older adults.The financial support and tool support provided only promote the health of women and the elderly.The financial support and tools provided to support the health of middle-aged and elderly people aged 45～60 years old have played a positive role in promoting the health,and the impact results are significant.For middle-aged and elderly people in the age group of 61～70,the tool support provided has a significant impact on their health,but the economic support provided does not have a significant impact on health;In the age range of 71～80 years old,the results are the opposite,and the financial support provided has a significant survivorship effect on the health of middle-aged and older adults,but the impact of the life support provided is not significant.Further research found that the emotional communication between middle-aged and elderly people and their children played a mediating effect between the intergenerational support provided by middle-aged and elderly people and their own health,indicating that the intergenerational support provided by middle-aged and elderly people can improve their own health by improving the degree of emotional communication with their children.