A Study of Living Arrangements of the Elderly - The Effects of Subjective Willingness and Objective Conditions

• Main Authors: Ze-Yu Ke, 柯則宇
• Other Authors: Lang-Wen Huang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/mvf9hv

碩士 === 東吳大學 === 社會學系 === 101 === 　　Confronting the rapidly growing elderly population, scholars in Taiwan are conducting research on the elderly, and particularly on their living arrangements. Past studies investigating such arrangements have mostly focused on demographic factors, based on the assumptions that the number of children and external objective conditions are the main factors impacting living arrangements. However, in addition to the number of children and the objective conditions that affect these arrangements, the perspectives of the elderly on filial relations, their autonomy, and their subjective willingness are also important. Therefore, this study examines how the living arrangements of the elderly are affected by the number of their children, objective conditions, and their subjective willingness, and it also discusses whether subjective willingness varies due to income. This study uses data from the "Taiwan social change survey" of 2006 from Academia Sinica. A total of 296 effective samples were examined to determine the factors that influence the living arrangements of the elderly. 　　The results show although objective conditions do indeed affect the living arrangements of the elderly, only the objective conditions of gender and income are significant. First, high-income elderly people are not inclined to live with their married children, and the effect of gender is the opposite of that reported in previous studies; men are more inclined to live with their married children. Second, regarding subjective willingness, highly autonomous elderly people are not inclined to live with their married children. Last, the income of the elderly does not alter the effect of their subjective willingness on living types; that is, income is not a moderating factor. A noteworthy finding of this paper is that autonomy affects the living arrangements more than the objective conditions do, which means that when the elderly choose not to follow the tradition of living with their children, they will choose their ideal living arrangements, with autonomy being the most important factor affecting their living arrangements.