AUTHOR=Zhou Lulin , Zhu Change , Walsh Christine A. , Zhang Xinjie 

TITLE=Assessing the effect of health status on multidimensional poverty among older adults: the Chinese longitudinal healthy longevity survey

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Public Health

VOLUME=11

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1150344

DOI=10.3389/fpubh.2023.1150344

ISSN=2296-2565

ABSTRACT=<sec id="sec1"><title>Background</title><p>This study aimed to explore the association between health status (physical, mental, and self-rated health) and multidimensional poverty (subjective and objective poverty) in older adults.</p></sec><sec id="sec2"><title>Method</title><p>A panel binary logit regression approach was applied to four waves of CLHLS data (2008, 2011, 2014, and 2018). In total,1,445 individuals were included after data cleaning.</p></sec><sec id="sec3"><title>Results</title><p>The mean values and proportion of physical, mental, and self-rated health were 5.73 (87.42%), 0.93 (93.06%), and 3.46 (86.7%), respectively, and mean values and proportion of subjective and objective poverty were 0.19 (18.51%) and 0.21(21.4%). In addition, physical, mental, and self-rated health were all found to be associated with subjective poverty among older adults (<italic>r</italic> = −0.181, <italic>r</italic> = −0.630, <italic>r</italic> = −0.321, <italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.05), that is, the better the physical, mental, and self-rated health, the lower the probability of subjective poverty. A comparable connection between self-rated health and objective poverty also exists (<italic>r</italic> = −0.157, <italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.05). Furthermore, medical expenditure played a mediation role in the association between the health status and poverty of older adults.</p></sec><sec id="sec4"><title>Conclusion</title><p>In order to effectively alleviate the poverty of older adults, strategies should be taken to improve the health level of older adults, especially the physical and mental health of high-aged older adults, and the self-rated health of middle-aged older adults. Furthermore, social security and pensions should be further developed to adequately reimburse medical expenditures.</p></sec>