Health, Security and Participation: A Structural Relationship Modeling among the Three Pillars of Active Ageing in China

Abstract

This paper explores and tests the impact of health and security on the participation of Chinese older people using data from the China Longitudinal Ageing Social Survey (CLASS) in 2014. Based on the framework of Active Ageing, the exogenous latent variables “health” and “security” are assumed to directly affect the endogenous latent variable “participation”, and indirectly affect it via mediating the function of “willingness”. The estimation results of the structural equation model show that health has a significant positive impact, while security has a significant negative impact on participation. In addition, health and security can significantly enhance the willingness of older people to participate. After the opposite effects of health and security are offset, their net effect on participation is generally negative. According to these empirical results, this paper concludes that the optimization of health coupled with the moderation of security level is more beneficial for promoting the participation of older people.