The Association Between Perception of Old-Age Care Responsibility and Life Satisfaction among Chinese Older Adults

Against the backdrop of rapid population aging in East Asia, scholarly interest in the life satisfaction of older adults, especially their perceptions of old-age care responsibility, has grown significantly.However, empirical research investigating the association between perceptions of oldage care responsibility and life satisfaction remains limited.Building upon data from 10,426 respondents aged 60 and above from the 2020 China Longitudinal Aging Social Survey (CLASS), multinomial logistic regression was hereby applied to identify factors associated with older adults' perceptions of old-age care responsibility.Furthermore, generalized ordered logistic regression was then conducted to examine the relationship between these perceptions and life satisfaction, controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, health status, and social networks.The results showed that perceptions of old-age care responsibility were distributed as follows: three-party shared responsibility (42.52%), children (33.07%), government (12.56%), and individuals (11.85%).Compared to the group endorsing three-party shared responsibility, respondents who attributed primary responsibility to children exhibited significantly higher life satisfaction (OR = 1.818, p < 0.001).In contrast, those assigning primary responsibility to the government reported significantly lower life satisfaction (OR = 0.725, p < 0.001).No statistically significant difference was observed among respondents endorsing individual responsibility (OR = 0.957, p = 0.472).These findings underscore the pivotal role of perceptions regarding old-age care responsibility in shaping older adults' life satisfaction.Based on this, the study presents several policy and practice recommendations for elder care, aiming to promote the well-being of aging populations.