Objective To investigate the impact of intergenerational support from children on older adults' healthcare seeking behaviors and to provide suggestions to help promote sensible healthcare seeking behaviors in older adults.
Methods Based on the data from the 2016 baseline data and the 2018 national tracking survey of China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), a total of 5690 respondents aged 60 years and older with surviving children were selected for the study. Logistic regression was used to analyze the effect of children's intergenerational support on older adults' healthcare seeking behavior.
Results The probability of seeing a doctor in the last two weeks was relatively higher among older adults whose children provided financial support (odds ratio OR=1.129, 95% confidence interval CI: 1.004-1.271, P<0.05), but the effect of whether children provided financial support on one-year hospitalization was not significant (P>0.05). Daily care support from children contributed positively to both seeing a doctor in the last two weeks and one-year hospitalization among older adults (OR=1.155, 95% CI: 1.021-1.307, P<0.05; OR=1.204, 95% CI: 1.053-1.378, P<0.01), while whether or not older adults saw their children daily had no significant effect on either seeing a doctor in the last two weeks or one-year hospitalization among older adults (P>0.05).
Conclusion Intergenerational support from children has an important influence on the healthcare seeking behaviors of older adults. The advantageous role of children's intergenerational support should be made full use of. In addition, formal channels of social support should be improved to alleviate the pressure on children to provide intergenerational support and suggestions should be provided to promote sensible healthcare seeking behaviors in older adults, so as to further improve the overall health level of older adults.
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