IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp17967.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Spousal Bereavement and Long-Term Care Needs of Older Chinese Adults

Author

Listed:
  • Nie, Peng

    (Xi’an Jiaotong University)

  • Zhang, Bin
  • Ding, Lanlin

    (Peking University)

  • Sousa-Poza, Alfonso

    (University of Hohenheim)

Abstract

Leveraging nationally representative data from the 2011-2018 Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Study (CLHLS), this study examines the impact of spousal death on long-term care (LTC) needs among Chinese older adults aged 60 and above. Our results show that spousal bereavement significantly increases the probability of LTC needs by 5.0-9.1 percentage points across severity levels (low, medium, and high). Such adverse effects are much stronger among older individuals aged 75+. Our mechanism analysis identifies three key pathways through which spousal bereavement increases LTC needs, including the loss of primary caregiving, worsened emotional stress, and increased healthcare utilization especially for inpatient costs. Our findings highlight the urgent need for targeted LTC policies that support vulnerable widowed populations, particularly older widows.

Suggested Citation

  • Nie, Peng & Zhang, Bin & Ding, Lanlin & Sousa-Poza, Alfonso, 2025. "Spousal Bereavement and Long-Term Care Needs of Older Chinese Adults," IZA Discussion Papers 17967, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17967
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp17967.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    emotional stress; primary caregiving; long-term care needs; spousal bereavement; healthcare utilization;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
    • J14 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-Labor Market Discrimination
    • H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17967. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.