The proposed research aims to analyze the linkages between the social environment - broadly defined - and health status among older Chinese in two Asian societies, Taiwan (R.O.C.) and Mainland China (P.R.C.). In particular, it will have the following specific aims. l. To describe the social environment of the elderly in each society in terms of socioeconomic attributes (education, income, and occupation), degree of social integration (marital status, living arrangement, contact with children, friends, and social participation) and the quality of social support (emotional support, instrumental support, etc.), and the level of association of these dimensions with various measures of health status (chronic disorders, disability, subjective assessment). 2. To develop and test appropriate causal models which will capture the relative importance of the different components of the social environment on health, and to see if these components differ according to the dimensions of health in question. 3. To give particular attention to the effect of marriage on physiological responses among older persons, given previous research on the strong relation between this attribute and mortality and health. For Taiwan, it will be possible to study the effect of marital dissolution (primarily through widowhood) on mortality and health transitions from panel data. 4. To compare the similarities and differences in the structure and magnitude of the relations between the social environment and health outcomes in the two Asian societies. The data used for the proposed research will come from detailed sample surveys conducted in Taiwan and the city of Baoding in Mainland China. The potential for including analyses for Shanghai and its environs, where another survey patterned on Taiwan was carried out, will be assessed during the period of this proposed research.
