Gender Differences in Cognition among Older Adults in China
Gender Differences in Cognition among Older Adults in China
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DOI：
10.3368/jhr.47.4.951
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发表时间：
2012-09-01
影响因子：
5.2
通讯作者：
Zhao, Yaohui
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Lei, Xiaoyan;Hu, Yuqing;Zhao, Yaohui
在本文中，我们使用了一个新的样本，中年和老年人的中国受访者的认知能力的性别差异模型。以美国健康与退休研究（HRS）为模型，CHARLS试点调查的受访者年龄在45岁以上，来自两个截然不同的省份-浙江，一个东海岸的高增长工业化省份，和甘肃，一个西部的大农业和贫困省份-在某种意义上说，新中国和旧中国。我们的认知测量成人认知的两个不同维度-情景记忆和完整的精神状态。在这两项指标上，中国女性的得分都比中国男性低得多，这种性别差异在年龄较大的中国人群中越来越大。我们将这些认知得分与学校教育、城市居住、家庭和社区经济资源水平以及身高联系起来。我们发现，认知是更密切相关的平均社区资源，而不是家庭资源，特别是对妇女来说，这表明在传统的贫穷的中国社区有强大的经济激励，有利于男孩在牺牲女孩。我们还发现，随着中国经济的快速增长，这些认知能力的性别差异在出生队列中一直在稳步下降。在中国的年轻人群体中，认知能力不再存在任何性别差异。这与美国的情况相似，成年女性的认知得分实际上超过了成年男性。
In this paper, we model gender differences in cognitive ability in China using a new sample of middle-aged and older Chinese respondents. Modeled after the American Health and Retirement Study (HRS), the CHARLS Pilot survey respondents are 45 years and older in two quite distinct provinces-Zhejiang, a high-growth industrialized province on the East Coast, and Gansu, a largely agricultural and poor province in the West-in a sense new and old China. Our cognition measures proxy for two different dimensions of adult cognition-episodic memory and intact mental status. On both measures, Chinese women score much lower than do Chinese men, a gender difference that grows among older Chinese cohorts. We relate both these cognition scores to schooling, urban residence, family and community levels of economic resources, and height. We find that cognition is more closely related to mean community resources than to family resources, especially for women, suggesting that in traditional poor Chinese communities there are strong economic incentives to favor boys at the expense of girls. We also find that these gender differences in cognitive ability have been steadily decreasing across birth cohorts as the economy of China grew rapidly. Among cohorts of young adults in China, there is no longer any gender disparity in cognitive ability. This parallels the situation in the United States where cognition scores of adult women actually exceed those of adult men.