Abstract
Backgrounds Chronic conditions could bring not only heavy economic burden on families, but also had negative emotional and mental impacts to patients and their family members. The aim of this study is to explore the effect of chronic health shock of elderly people on spousal subjective well-being in China from urban-rural dimension.Methods We used two most recent databases —2011 and 2015—of China Health and Nutrition Survey, and the total sample were categorized into urban sample and rural sample. Participants were defined as treatment group if his/her spouse was diagnosed with chronic disease in 2015 and not diagnosed in 2011; others were defined as control group. Propensity score matching was used to evaluate the average treatment effect of treated(ATT)of spousal chronic health shock. Ordinary linear square(OLS) regression was also deployed to explore the relationship between spousal chronic health shock and subjective well-being.Results The total sample size was 2577, with 1023 in urban area and 1554 in rural area. ATT in urban area was -0.209 in radius matching with caliper, and it is statistically significant; however, in rural area, ATT was 0.069, and it didn’t achieve statistical significance. The results of OLS regression after PSM also suggested that spousal chronic health shock had a negative effect on subjective well-being of urban elderly, and for rural elderly, there was no such an effect.Conclusions Our study highlights more attention needs to be paid in subjective well-being of individual whose spouse suffers from chronic conditions, especially in urban China.
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