Elderly Well-being and Socioeconomic Status in China and England

This paper compares the relationship between socioeconomic status (wealth and education) and multiple dimensions of elderly well-being--disability, mobility, self-reported health status, memory, depression, and life satisfaction--in a middle-income country (China) and a high-income country (England) based on regression analysis that uses harmonized measurements from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) and the England Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA). Cross-country comparisons can help identify which relationships are universal and which depend on local contextualizing factors. We find that for physical health measures (self-reported health, ADLs/IADLs, mobility), wealth has stronger relationship in England than in China, with the poorest especially disadvantaged, but that the opposite is true for psychological health measures (life satisfaction, depression). It could be that in China current wealth is less correlated with lifetime wealth, which determines physical health, but that psychological health adapts more quickly to changes in socioeconomic status. We also find that education gradients are greater in China than in England for some measures (ADLs/IADLs, life satisfaction, memory), perhaps indicating that education is a stronger determinant of lifetime opportunities in China.