Gender differential impact of bereavement on health outcomes: evidence from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
Gender differential impact of bereavement on health outcomes: evidence from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, 2011–2015 Zhuo Chen1,2* , Jiahui Ying1, Justin Ingles1, Donglan Zhang1, Janani Rajbhandari-Thapa1, Ruoxi Wang3, Kerstin Gerst Emerson1 and Zhanchun Feng3
Abstract Background: Bereavement is the experience of an individual following the death of a person of significance to the individual, most often referring to the spouse. Increased morbidity, health care utilization, and mortality are known to be associated with bereavement. Given China’s growing population of older adults, there is a critical need to assess the health consequences of bereavement. Method: We use data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study to examine the impact of bereavement on mental health and quality of life among a sample of mid- and older-aged adults. We use propensity score matching to construct a matching sample and difference-in-differences method to estimate the impact of bereavement on mental health and self-assessed health. Results: We find bereavement is associated with increased depression symptoms among women (1.542 point or 0.229 standard deviations of Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) 10 score) but not consistently for men over time. No statistically significant effect of bereavement on self-assessed health is found. Conclusions: Our results show a harmful impact of bereavement on mental health among older women in China and point to the need for a comprehensive policy on survivor benefits in China, particularly for rural older women. Keywords: Bereavement, Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, Self-assessed health, Survivor benefits, China
Background Family protects members from the uncertainties of life. Bereavement, the death of a family member, can be a significant life event that leaves survivors with a traumatic grief experience [1, 2]. Bereavement can involve the loss of a parent, spouse, sibling, or child. One’s risk * Correspondence: [email protected] 1 College of Public Health University of Georgia, Wright Hall 305B, 100 Foster Rd, Athens, GA 30602, USA 2 University of Nottingham Ningbo China, Ningbo 315100, Zhejiang, China Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
of exposure to spousal death increases with age. Evaluating the consequence of a late-life spousal bereavement has important implications for research and policymaking, particularly for countries with an aging population. In China, the proportion of older adults is projected to increase to 26% by 2050, exceeding that of most European countries [3]. Examining the impact of spousal bereavement in the old age in China is a critical and timely topic.
© The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and
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