1. Who will do more? The pattern of daily out-of-home activity participation in elderly co-residence households in urban China.
- Author
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Feng, Jianxi, Chuai, Xiaowei, Lu, Yue, Guo, Xiaomin, and Yuan, Ye
- Subjects
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NUCLEAR families , *GOVERNMENT policy , *PARTICIPATION , *HOUSEHOLDS , *INTERDEPENDENCE theory , *EXTENDED families , *OLDER people - Abstract
Over the last several decades an on-going interest by academics in studies of intra- and inter-personal relationships has revealed complex and dynamic decision-making mechanisms within households. However, previous research has mainly focused on the relationship between partners/spouses in households of couples and/or nuclear families. The intra-household dynamics in household contexts other than couples/spouses and inter-personal relations in these other households remain largely unknown. This paper is therefore dedicated to investigating the intra- and inter-personal interactions of partners/spouses and inter-personal interactions between different generations in elderly co-residence households. Using data from the Nanjing Residents Travel Survey 2012, an asymmetric structure is observed among the interactions between young females and males: males' activity participation is more strongly affected by females' activity engagement than the reverse. The presence of an elderly mother or mother-in-law tends to reduce the interdependence of intra- and inter-personal interactions for both young couples. It is interesting to find that a young female's activities are more determined by her elderly mother in the extended family than her husband. The influence of a young spouse on an old mother's activity participation is also gender-specific. Implications of these findings for public policies are also discussed at the end of the paper. • Males' activity participation is more strongly affected by that of females than the reverse • The presence of a mother leads to less radeoffs between activities of both spouses • Female's activities are more determined by her mother in the extended family than her husband • The influence of a young spouse on an old mother's activity participation is gender-specific [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2020
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