Original Study
Health Characteristics of Older People Who Rotationally Live With Families: A Nationwide Survey

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Abstract

Background

Population aging has been a critical issue around the world and people will have to face living problems when they get old. In Western countries, older people are more used to live alone or in institutions. In Eastern countries, due to filial piety of Chinese culture, the elderly prefer to live with their children or their relatives. There was no empirical study to investigate the relationship between health and living arrangement among older Taiwanese.

Objective

This study was designed to explore the association between living arrangement and health characteristics among the elderly in Taiwan.

Method

This study used national representative data from the Taiwan Longitudinal Study on Aging surveyed in 2007. We identified 2621 elders aged older than 65 in 2007 and categorized them into 3 types of living arrangement by the questionnaire. Linear regressions were used to analyze the relationship between living arrangement and health status (activities of daily living [ADLs], instrumental activities of daily living [IADLs], and Center of Epidemiological Studies–depression [CES-D]) among the elderly.

Results

Elderly individuals who indicated they rotationally lived with family members had poorer health conditions, including IADLs (Coeff = 0.23; 95% confidence interval [CI]: –0.06–0.52) and CES-D (Coeff = 0.41; 95% CI: –0.59–1.40), than those who steadily lived with family. In contrast, elderly individuals who lived alone had better health conditions in IADLs (Coefficient = –0.38; 95% CI: –0.53 to –0.22) than those who indicated they lived steadily with family.

Conclusions

These findings reveal that this type of rotational living is not a good living arrangement for the elderly.

Section snippets

Data Source and Sample

Data of this study were retrieved from the Taiwan Longitudinal Study on Aging (TLSA), which was a nationwide population-based survey by the Bureau of Health Promotion, Department of Health. The major aim of the TLSA was to provide information on longitudinal trends of social, economic, and health status of the elderly in Taiwan and the associative factors. The study participants were randomly selected from people aged 60 years or older among 331 cities and townships in Taiwan in 1989. Overall,

Results

Table 1 summarizes the demographic characteristics of the study sample. Subjects with rotational living arrangement were significantly older than the others (81.1 ± 7.3 years for rotational living arrangement vs 75.9 ± 7.2 years for those who live with families, and 76.9 ± 6.6 years for those who lived alone, P < .001 by 1-way analysis of variance). Compared with men, those with a rotational living arrangement were more likely to be women (68.8%) than those who lived with families (48.3%) or

Discussion

Living with families, mostly adult children, is considered an ideal living arrangement in traditional Chinese culture and is a key presentation of filial piety. Adult children may feel somewhat blameworthy if their parents live alone without being provided direct care by them. However, because of the westernization of societies and globalization of job opportunities, living with elderly parents has become a less feasible living arrangement in modern societies. Therefore, an alternative solution

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The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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