Living Arrangements and Subjective Well-being of the Elderly in China and Japan

This study investigates the influence of living alone on the elderly’s subjective well-being (SWB), using longitudinal survey data from China and Japan. The main findings are as follows. First, the influence of living alone on SWB is not statistically significant for elderly Chinese women, while elderly Japanese women who live alone are likely to feel significantly happier. Second, living alone does not affect SWB of elderly Chinese men, while it significantly negatively affects the SWB of elderly Japanese men. In addition, for elderly Japanese men, the negative effect of living alone disappears when marital status is controlled for in a fixed effects ordered logit model. Third, the random effects ordered logit model shows that the negative associations between living alone and SWB are stronger for elderly men than for elderly women both in China and Japan. This suggests that the effect of living alone differs by gender among the elderly in both countries.