Older parents benefit more in health outcome from daughters than sons emotional care in China
Open accessAbstract
OBJECTIVE: To examine whether older parents in China would benefit more from daughters' care than from sons' emotional care. METHOD: Analysis of the unique data sets of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey conducted in 2002, 2005, and 2008-2009 in 22 provinces. RESULTS: As compared with having son(s), having daughter(s) is significantly more beneficial at older ages in China, with regard to maintaining higher cognitive capacity and reducing mortality risk. Such daughter advantages in providing emotional care to older parents are more profound among the oldest-old aged 80+ as compared with the young-old aged 65 to 79 and surprisingly more profound in rural areas as compared with urban areas, even though son preference is much more common among rural residents. DISCUSSION: We describe how educational campaigns aimed at informing the public about the benefits of daughter(s) for older parents' health outcome could help promote gender equality and reduce traditional son preference, especially in rural China.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
For elderly care, daughters are more beneficial than sons.
“Further, the benefits of daughters rather than sons for old age care42,43 should be widely publicised.”
From The effects of China’s universal two-child policy (2016) · cites this paper as [42]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 62 · Cited by 78
Research works printed but not linked: 4
- Folstein MFY Folstein SE McHugh PR 1975 “Minimental state.” A practical method for grading the cognitive state of patients for the clinician Journal of Psychiatric Research 12 3 189 198 1202204
- Goodkind D 2009 Review of the book Healthy Longevity in China: Demographic, Socioeconomic, and Psychological Dimensions Population Studies 63 3 1 7
- Hu A Yang Z Yan Y 2015 Trends and tasks of social security in China in the 13th five-year national development plan period Journal of the Party School of the Central Committee of the CPC 1 85 90 In Chinese
- Ye Z 2009 9 29 Establish a green cover for people—The 60-years of the social security program in China People’s Daily (overseas edition) 2 [in Chinese]. Retrieved from http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrbhwb/html/2009-09/29/content_352961.htm
- Authors
- Zeng, Y., Brasher, M. S., Gu, D., & Vaupel, J. W.
- Affiliations
- Duke University (US)
- University of Rhode Island (US)
- United Nations (US)
- Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Zeng, Yi
- Venue
- Journal of Aging and Health
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2016-07-09
- Volume
- 28
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 1426-1447
- ISSN
- 0898-2643 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-6887
- PMC
- PMC5947966
- OpenAlex
- W2228335884
- Cited by
- 78
- References
- 62
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 12 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 17 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 22.82
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- europepmc.org
- Locations
- Journal of Aging and Health (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Journal of Media Literacy Education (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DukeSpace (Duke University) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Funders
- National Institute on Aging (R01AG023627, P30AG034424)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences
- Social Sciences › Demography › Family Dynamics and Relationships
- Keywords
- child gender, emotional care, elderly parents, cognitive function, mortality risk, oldest old, urban-rural differences, son preference, gender equality, China
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Aged, 80 and over, China, Emotions, Female, Humans, Male, Nuclear Family, Parent-Child Relations, Parents, Rural Population
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
