Sociology Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2804
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Item THE WORST OF TIMES? AGING WITH LIMITED FAMILY TIES IN THE UNITED STATES(2024) Liu, Jingwen; Caudillo, Mónica L.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The drastic demographic and family transitions since the 1970s have raised ongoing discussions about whether older adults fare well socially and psychologically when they are increasingly likely to age alone in the U.S. Based on the social convoy model, the three studies of this dissertation answer this question by extending the focus from the proximal kinship ties to nonkin networks and broader social participation. Particular attention is paid to gender and racial/ethnic differences as demographic and family transitions are experienced unevenly by different social groups. The first study examines how family instability and the deviation from “normative” family trajectories are associated with older adults’ mental health. It found different levels of importance of the structure and instability of family for men and women of different racial/ethnic groups. Moving beyond family and households, the second study explores the substitution effect of extended family, friends, and neighborhoods in the absence of proximal relations. It reveals the “double plight” of Black and Hispanic older adults who may suffer from both a disproportionate exposure to the declining marriage and a lack of supportive distant relations serving as buffer zones in the absence of core kinship ties. The third study disentangles the population-level age and cohort trends of social connectedness, a more comprehensive indicator of individuals’ social wellbeing. It finds distinct intercohort changes in both the overall level of social connectedness and intracohort gender and racial/ethnic disparities. These trends can be partially explained by cohort differences in socioeconomic resources and health. However, societal changes that emphasize the significance of intergenerational solidarity, friendship ties, digital communication, non-religious social participation, and volunteering may play a more significant role. Taken together, this dissertation depicts a mixed picture of different populations who demonstrate varying levels of vulnerability and resilience against the quickly developing society. Therefore, it calls for both the enhancement of social welfare regimes and more positive narratives about unique resilience and strengths for women, racial/ethnic minorities, and socioeconomically disadvantaged older adults.Item INTERGENERATIONAL SUPPORT AND WELL-BEING OF OLDER ADULTS IN CHANGING FAMILY CONTEXTS(2016) Bao, Luoman; Chen, Feinian; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation consists of three papers that examine the complexities in upward intergenerational support and adult children’s influence on older adults’ health in changing family contexts of America and China. The prevalence of “gray divorce/repartnering ” in later life after age 55 is on the rise in the United States, yet little is known about its effect on intergenerational support. The first paper uses the life course perspective to examine whether gray divorce and repartnering affect support from biological and stepchildren differently than early divorce and repartnering, and how patterns differ by parents’ gender. Massive internal migration in China has led to increased geographic distance between adult children and aging parents, which may have consequences for old age support received by parents. This topic has yet to be thoroughly explored in China, as most studies of intergenerational support to older parents have focused on the role of coresident children or have not considered the interdependence of multiple parent-child dyads in the family. The second paper adopts the within-family differences approach to assess the influence of non-coresident children’s relative living proximity to parents compared to that of their siblings on their provision of support to parents in rural and urban Chinese families. The study also examines how patterns of the impact are moderated by parents’ living arrangement, non-coresident children’s gender, and parents’ provision of support to children. Taking a multigenerational network perspective, the third paper questions if and how adult children’s socioeconomic status (SES) influences older parents’ health in China. It further examines whether health benefits brought by adult children’s socioeconomic attainment are larger for older adults with lower SES and whether one of the mechanisms through which adult children’s SES affects older parents’ health is by changing their health behaviors. These questions are highly relevant in contemporary China, where adult children have experienced substantial gains in SES and play a central role in old age support for parents. In sum, these three papers take the life course, the within-family differences, and the multigenerational network perspective to address the complexities in intergenerational support and older adults’ health in diverse family contexts.Item The Changing Nature of the Retirement Transition for Dual Earning Couples(2015) Jackson, Jonathan; Kahn, Joan R; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation examines how dual-earning couples navigate the retirement transition differently now that women's and men's work lives have become more similar. As the retirement transition has become more complex, understanding how and when people retire requires researchers and policymakers to be attuned to the family lives in which individuals are embedded. The decision to retire is an individual choice but one's family circumstances, particularly one's spouse, can influence the process. Couples must often factor in spouses' age, health, pension assets, and health insurance coverage, especially since the work lives of many women have become much more similar to men. Whereas men's retirement decisions were seen to depend on their employment situation and women's' on their husband's, women's rising attachment to the labor force means their work lives should be increasingly important in understanding the retirement transition of couples. This dissertation fills a gap in retirement research by utilizing a life course perspective to systematically study change across cohorts in how marital partners manage the retirement transition amidst rapid structural changes in the economy. Analyses use multiple waves of data from the Health and Retirement Study, applying a variety of modeling techniques to investigate the way that couples move from employment to retirement. Specifically, I focus on retirement expectations and timing, looking at whether dual earning couples influence and synchronize each other's retirement and how this may change across cohorts. Results suggest that coordination between couples may be declining, as both husbands and wives influence their respective partners' retirement expectations less in later cohorts. Analysis of the degree to which dual-earning couples synchronize their retirement expectations show that such couples expect to retire together when they both have the pension resources to do so. Results from event history models further indicate that the retirement trajectories have changed for the leading baby boom cohort, as evidence implies they are delaying retirement longer than previous cohorts. The findings provide mixed support for the notion that wives are influencing their husbands' retirement timing more in later cohorts or that the influence of husbands on wives' retirement timing has declined across cohorts.Item Living Arrangements and Health of the Elderly in India(2011) Samanta, Tannistha; Vanneman, Reeve; Chen, Feinian; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Do multigenerational (co-residential) families have protective effects on elderly health? Demographic literature on aging in developing countries has started to examine this question as the contours of global population have been undergoing dramatic changes. Nevertheless, the theoretical and empirical literature on the relative benefits for the elderly of residing in multigenerational households versus living alone, have remained remarkably elusive. In part, the empirical inconsistency is a result of a significant methodological gap in the extant literature: most empirical studies are based on cross-sectional data where the authors have been largely unsuccessful in eliminating explanations based on the possible selection effects. India offers an interesting context to study this relationship as the country experiences a growing elderly population coupled with a severe lack of institutional systems of care for the aged. This dissertation draws data from the India Human Development Survey (2004-05) - a nationally representative, multi-topic data set of 41,554 households. It focuses on the relationship between household composition-whether the elderly are living independently, with children, or with other relatives-and short-term morbidity in the last month. The analysis uses standard multivariate regression models and a relatively unconventional technique-propensity score analysis to account for the endogeneity/selectivity problem. Three particularly salient conclusions are drawn from this research. First, household level analyses using propensity score methods highlight the importance of multigenerational families to the health of the elderly. These results also suggest health effects of household wealth, urban location, the number of adults in the household, and (male) gender. A second set of analyses show that multigenerational families also spend more on medical care when the elderly do get sick. Moreover the same set of household variables that predict better elderly health (wealth, urbanization, adults, gender) also predict higher medical expenditures. Finally, multilevel analyses, using district-level data from the Census of India (2001), corroborate the "urban advantage" finding and demonstrate that health of the elderly is affected not only by household compositional factors (e.g. living arrangements) but also by the larger context created by urbanization.Item SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF OVERWEIGHT AND OBESITY AMONG ELDERLY MEN AND WOMEN IN TAIWAN(2009) Sa, Zhihong; Kahn, Joan R.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Although an obesity epidemic has spread to people of all age groups, empirical knowledge about elderly obesity remains largely scant, particularly in non-Western societies. This dissertation addresses that gap by examining the social determinants of overweight and obesity and weight gain among men and women, using 1999 and 2003 waves of the longitudinal Survey of Health and Living Status of the Near Elderly and Elderly in Taiwan. Existing literature shows that the effect of socioeconomic status (SES) on body weight shifts from positive to negative as the level of development of a society progresses from low to high, and social gradients in obesity appear first among women. A gender-specific pattern of social disparities in overweight and obesity is expected to have emerged in Taiwan. The analysis captures a gendered pattern in the transition of the SES-obesity relationship in Taiwan. Similar to less-developed countries, men and women with more material resources (i.e. income and wealth) have an elevated risk of overweight and obesity, indicating the importance of material resources in getting access to food through most of the lifetime of this elderly population. However, household wealth is inversely associated with short-term weight gain among women, suggesting that wealth may become a protective factor against overweight and obesity. The education effect has shifted to the pattern of Western societies, particularly among women. While education has strong negative impacts on cumulative body weight among women, it is inversely associated with short-term weight gain for both men and women. The protective effect of education emerges earlier among women than among men, probably as a result of educated women adopting the Western ideal of thinness. Also, the negative effect of childhood SES on body weight among women is transmitted through education. Hence, social disparities in overweight and obesity among older women is mainly produced by differential weight gains in adulthood for individuals of different SES. Finally, the relationship between social participation and excess body weight is explored. Men and women with active social participation have a reduced risk for greater weight gain, suggesting that social participation may have some buffering effects on unhealthy weight outcomes of the disadvantaged groups, especially among women.Item Role Occupancy, Physical Health and the Diminishment of the Sense of Mattering in Late Life(2007-11-28) Fazio, Elena Marie; Milkie, Melissa A; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Mattering is an important but understudied part of the self-concept. Morris Rosenberg and Claire McCullough (1981) suggested that older adults feel they matter less than middle-aged adults and this discrepancy may in part be explained by a lack of role occupancies such as paid work, and a devaluation of the old in society at large. This dissertation examines sense of mattering in older adults and two mechanisms that may explain the decline of the self-concept in later life - fewer role occupancies and poorer physical health. It examines whether these processes differ for men versus women and for African-Americans versus whites. The study employs the first wave (2001) of data from the Aging, Stress and Health (ASH) Study, which includes over 1100 white and African-American adults over age 65 living in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Results indicate that there is a negative relationship between age and both dependence mattering and importance mattering and that it is in part explained by role occupancies as well as physical health status. Compared to informal ties, work and volunteer roles (productive or formal roles), are more important in explaining the relationship between age and mattering. Additionally, the total number of roles held is significantly and positively related to dependence and importance mattering. How roles mediate the relationship between age and dependence mattering depends on race and gender. The work role significantly mediates the age/mattering relationship for whites, but not for African-Americans. For African-Americans, the volunteer role mediates the relationship between age and dependence mattering, but this is not the case for whites. Also, self-rated health mediates the age-dependence mattering relationship for whites but not African-Americans. These findings point to the need to employ multiple mattering measures in analyses of older adults as well to study diverse samples; results differ depending on the outcome variable and group examined. Mattering is critical to the comprehensive study of the self-concept in later phases of the life course, as it is sensitive to social roles and physical health both of which are locations for key changes occurring during late life.