ASSOCIATION OF RELIGIOUS PARTICIPATION WITH HEALTH AND SURVIVAL AMONG THE OLDEST OLD IN CHINA Zeng Yi, Danan Gu, Linda George

1. Introduction  1.1 Religions in China  (1) Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism are five widely recognized institutional religions in contemporary China (Fan 2003), with Buddhism and Daoism as the major ones.  (2) Basic differences between Chinese and Western religious practice: Western religion has a highly organized church-based network that is independent of other social networks. This does not exist in Chinese societies.

1.2 Hypotheses I.Chinese oldest-olds who are religious participants have better health than non- participants II.Chinese oldest-olds who are religious participants have advantages in survival and longevity, compared to non-participants; III.The effects of religious participation on health and survival are stronger among oldest old females than among oldest old males.

2. Data and methods  2.1 Data source pooled data: 1998, 2000, and 2002 waves of the CLHLS Age range in this study:

 2.2 Measurements and controls (1). Religious activities “At the present time, do you participate in religious activities?” (a). almost everyday; (b). sometimes; (c). do not participate.

 2.2 Measurements and controls (continued) (2). Socio-demographic variables - age - gender - urban/rural residence - ethnicity - education - economic independence

2.2 Measurements and controls (continued) (3). Family/social connection & support - marital status - living arrangement - proximity to children - play cards and/or mah-jong - who is the primary caregiver - get adequate medication

 2.2 Measurement and controls (continued) (4). Health practice - smoking - alcoholic consumption - exercise

 2.2 Measurement and controls (continued) (4). Health variables - ADL - MMSE - self-reported health - self-reported life satisfaction - depression symptoms (looking at the bright side of things; feel lonely; feel as happy now as when I was young)

 2.3 Methods (1). Health variables---logistic regression after correcting the intra-person correlation; (2). Survival analysis--- Weibull proportional hazard model correcting intra-person correlation; (Cleves, Gould, and Gutierrez 2002; Liang and Zeger 1986; Neuhaus 1992) > Sequential models > Missing value was imputed

3. Results  3.1 Associations between Religious Participation and Health based on cross-sectional data and logistic regression

3. Results (continued)  3.2 Associations of Religious Participation with survival based on longitudinal data and Weibull proportional hazard model

4. Conclusion  1. Adjusted for various confounding factors, the oldest old Chinese religious participants were healthier than the non-participants. Therefore, our study supports Hypothesis H1.  2. The results presented in Table 3 suggest that our Hypothesis H2 “Chinese oldest-olds who are religious participants have advantages in survival and longevity, compared to non-participants” is supported among females, but only marginally supported among males.  3. Our study supports the Hypothesis H3: the effects of religious participation on health and survival are stronger among oldest old females than among oldest old males.

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