The life satisfaction of elderly Chinese widows living alone and those living with adult children

Care of China's elderly population is of concern due to its projected growth as well as to changes in elder care patterns related to shifting social and economic conditions. Increases in life expectancy and, therefore, in the duration of widowhood, particularly for women, magnifies this concern. Studies that examine the living arrangements and life satisfaction of elderly widows in China are limited. This study of 147 elderly widows, both men and women, examined differences in the life satisfaction of those who live with their adult children and those who live alone. This study also examined whether the relationship between living arrangement and life satisfaction was moderated by levels of family and community support. According to study findings, elderly widows living alone have higher life satisfaction than those living with their adult children, and this effect remains with the introduction of controls for health status, family support, community support, gender, age, income and educational level. Further, neither family nor community support moderate the relationship between living arrangement and life satisfaction, although each exerts a direct effect on life satisfaction.     

Chapter 3: Health and Productivity Management

SUMMARY

This article focuses on the emergence of Health and Productivity Management (HPM) as a context for understanding the integration of health and wellness into employee assistance and work-life programs. Major factors influencing the growth of HPM are raising medical costs as well as the rising incidence of obesity. The Wake-up Call to Corporate America underscores the need to manage these costs and improve health through the proactive alignment of health-related benefits and programs. HPM is described as an integrated approach to capture direct medical costs as well as the indirect costs associated with poor health and lost productivity. Critical design and implementation features that are likely to contribute to a successful integrated approach are described and highlighted. An HPM case example of a large pharmaceutical company examines a unique cross referral program including considerations for continuous improvement. Finally, the article concludes with key challenges related to marketplace competition, pricing pressures, concerns regarding the sub-optimization of programs and the influence of current health care system changes.     

Older Adults Developing a Preference for Living Apart Together

What is understood about late life partner relationships is largely based on long‐term marriage, with little attention given to understanding the process of forming new partnerships in older adulthood. However, marked growth in cohabitation and greater awareness of living apart together (LAT) suggests a need for further investigation. The purpose of this grounded theory study was to explore how decisions about LAT are made among later‐life men and women. Twenty‐five participants completed life history calendars and semistructured interviews that examined how their current relationships evolved into LAT. Seven contributing factors were identified: relational and personal goals, age, caregiver burden, partner factors, relationship histories, and shifts in social mores. What participants were “doing” during the process of deciding to live apart together was working to resolve their long‐held and often ingrained beliefs about romantic relationships. Three preferences for LAT emerged from this study: opposing, ambivalent, and advocating. Future directions for research are discussed.     

Editorial

Immigrants from Asian countries who are living in Canada are more likely to live with extended families than Canadian-born seniors. This article focuses on the living arrangements of 161 South Asian immigrant seniors in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and examines the relative importance of various factors that influence living arrangements. Demographic characteristics were associated with living arrangements; seniors who immigrated when they were young and were married were the most likely to live independently. Logistic regression analyses suggest that economic and cultural factors were more important than health and availability of kin factors in explaining living arrangements, after controlling for demographic and immigration variables.     

Father Involvement and Childhood Injuries

Unintentional injury is the leading cause of death for children in the United States. Parental supervision is a key factor in preventing injuries, but little is known about the role of fathers. Today, one quarter of children live with a single mother, and another third live with a mother and her new partner, resulting in tremendous diversity in the amount and type of paternal involvement in children's lives. The authors examined the effects of involvement by resident biological, nonresident biological, and resident social fathers on the risk of injury among children from birth to age 5 using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 4,352). They found that living with a social father and social fathers' more frequent engagement with children increase risk of injury, but only for the youngest children. Higher levels of fathers' cooperative parenting reduce children's risk of injury regardless of fathers' biological or residential status.     

Family Structure and Child Well‐being: Integrating Family Complexity

Although children's family lives are diverse, the measurement of children's living arrangements has lagged, focusing on the relationships of children to parents while largely ignoring sibling composition. Using data from the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation (N = 23,985) the authors documented patterns of family complexity among a nationally representative sample of children ages 0–17 living in a range of family structures. They also examined the independent and joint associations of family structure and family complexity on child economic well‐being. Family complexity was independently related to economic disadvantage, namely, a lower income‐to‐needs ratio and a higher likelihood of public assistance receipt. The role of family complexity was partially contingent on family structure, with the positive association between family complexity and receipt of public assistance more pronounced for children in families with 2 married biological parents. This study demonstrates the utility of integrating family structure and family complexity in studies of children's well‐being.     

Family Ties and Young Fathers' Engagement in Cape Town,South Africa

Young South African fathers are often engaged in their children's lives even if they do not live together. Using longitudinal data on children (n = 1,209) from the Cape Town area, the authors show that although only 26% of young fathers live with their children, 66% of nonresidential fathers maintain regular contact, and 61% provide financial support. The father–child relationship, however, is embedded in broader family ties. The type of father–mother relationship is strongly associated with whether fathers coreside with their children but not with fathers' contact with nonresidential children. Close mother and maternal grandmother bonds reduce the likelihood that fathers live with their children, whereas close ties between fathers and paternal grandmothers increase the chance that fathers visit nonresidential children. Family ties do not affect fathers' financial contributions, which are driven by men's current economic situation. These findings illustrate that father–child relationships are best understood in the context of interacting family systems.     

Measuring and Modeling Cohabitation: New Perspectives From Qualitative Data

Almost all our knowledge about cohabitation in the United States rests on analysis of nationally representative, large‐scale surveys. We move beyond this work by drawing on 115 in‐depth interviews with a sample of young men and women with recent cohabitation experience. These data allow us to address two issues of central interest to family studies. First, we use our qualitative data to assess the measurement of cohabitation in surveys and the census. We find that current measurement strategies are probably underestimating cohabitation, and we may need to find new ways to measure cohabitation. Second, we employ qualitative findings to address issues relating to how we empirically model union formation. We find that the movement into cohabitation is not akin to marriage. It is often not a deliberate decision. Couples do not appear to be deciding between cohabitation and marriage; rather, their decision seems to center around whether to remain single or cohabit. These results have important implications for our analysis and understanding of cohabitation.     

保护私有财产权的伦理分析

完善保护私人财产权利的制度安排,需要更新人们传统的财产价值观,充分认识到在社会主义市场经济条件下,私有产权的伦理价值和保护私有财产的道德合理性;同时,保护私人财产权利的制度安排必须坚持正确的价值原则,促进私有经济的健康发展和私人财产社会价值的最优实现。     

Socio-historical paths of the male breadwinner model - an explanation of cross-national differences

It is often assumed that in the historical transformation to modern industrial society, the integration of women into the economy occurred everywhere as a three‐phase process: in pre‐modern societies, the extensive integration of women into societal production; then, their wide exclusion with the shift to industrial society; and finally, their re‐integration into paid work during the further course of modernization. Results from the author's own international comparative study of the historical development of the family and the economic integration of women have shown that this was decidedly not the case even for western Europe. Hence the question arises: why is there such historical variation in the development and importance of the housewife model of the male breadwinner family? In the article, an explanation is presented. It is argued that the historical development of the urban bourgeoisie was especially significant for the historical destiny of this cultural model: the social and political strength of the urban bourgeoisie had central societal importance in the imposition of the housewife model of the male breadwinner family as the dominant family form in a given society. In this, it is necessary to distinguish between the imposition of the breadwinner marriage at the cultural level on the one hand, and at the level of social practice in the family on the other.