To Engage or Not to Engage? Social Activities and Survival Beliefs in Older Adults.

While survival belief is central to major life decisions, its social determinants remain understudied. Social engagement is proven to influence various health outcomes, yet the direction of these relationships stays controversial, with quasi‐experimental designs being laid aside. It is also unexplor...

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Publicado en:Kyklos Vol. 78; no. 4; pp. 1387 - 1405
Autor principal: Wang‐Lu, Huaxin
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Wiley-Blackwell Nov2025
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: Nov2025
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        atl: To Engage or Not to Engage? Social Activities and Survival Beliefs in Older Adults.
      aug:
        au: Wang‐Lu, Huaxin
        affil: HeXie Management Research Centre and College of Industry‐Entrepreneurs, Xi'an Jiaotong‐Liverpool University, Suzhou, China
      su:
        Older people
        Community involvement
        Social isolation
        Psychological well-being
        Psychological resilience
        Causal models
        Panel analysis
        Longitudinal method
      sug:
        subj:
          Older people
          Community involvement
          Social isolation
          Psychological well-being
          Psychological resilience
          Causal models
          Panel analysis
          Longitudinal method
      keyword:
        aging
        China
        difference‐in‐differences
        social activity
        subjective health
        survival probability
        aging
        China
        difference‐in‐differences
        social activity
        subjective health
        survival probability
      ab: While survival belief is central to major life decisions, its social determinants remain understudied. Social engagement is proven to influence various health outcomes, yet the direction of these relationships stays controversial, with quasi‐experimental designs being laid aside. It is also unexplored what happens once individuals withdraw from established social life. To address these gaps, this paper leverages the potential randomness in the timing of individual (dis)engagement behavior to examine the causal effects of social (dis)engagement on the subjective probability of unsuccessful survival (SPUS) of young‐old Chinese, using a panel of 11,412 respondents from the 2011–2020 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. A dynamic difference‐in‐differences approach, with various constructs of treatment and control groups, was employed to validate the estimation. Several robustness checks, including factor analysis and propensity score matching, were further conducted. The primary findings are that social engagement reduces older people's SPUS by up to 2.80 percentage points immediately and by 6.67 percentage points one period later. Conversely, social disengagement shows no immediate effects, but its post‐treatment impact can reach up to 14.76 percentage points among subgroups. Interestingly, the engagement effects persist only among non‐switchers, fading once switching begins, and the disengagement effects also emerge only among non‐switchers. In sum, this study provides partial evidence of stronger disengagement effects, though these effects occur neither instantly nor universally.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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