Abstract
This symposium examines the health status among older adults and their family in developing countries using national and international surveys. The first three papers used the WHO’s Study on global AGEing and adult health (SAGE) Wave-1 data in 2010 and the last paper used the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey 2005 wave and the Family Dynamics Survey. The first paper assessed the association between migration and cognitive function among older adults in China across six groups of residents: urban, rural, urban-to-urban, rural-to-urban, rural-to-rural, and urban-to-rural. The results demonstrated urban-to-urban residents showed the highest level of cognitive function, followed by urban residents, while rural-to-rural residents showed the poorest cognitive function. The second study investigated the role of migration on the disparities in prevalence of hypertension across different populations in China and found rural-to-rural and rural residents were more likely, whereas urban-to-urban residents were less likely to have hypertension compared to urban residents. The third paper is a cross-national study that explored factors that influencing quality of life (QoL) among older adults in China, India, Russia, Ghana, and South Africa. This study found that not living in South Africa and Ghana (ref: China), better SES, higher level of cognitive and functional status, absence of diabetes, and higher level of social support were positively associated with QoL. The last paper examined association between filial piety and caregiving burden among Chinese adults children caregivers. The results showed filial piety is negatively related to caregiving burden. Urban-rural disparities in perceived caregiving burden were also found.