Crossnational Comparisons of Kinlessness and Health: Past, Present and Future

项目摘要 (从母基金复制) 世界各国目前正在经历先前人口结构变化的长期影响。 与第一次人口转变相关的死亡率和生育率的历史下降正在导致 许多社会的人口急剧老龄化，而且还会有更多的人口老龄化。最近，第二个人口群体 转型导致了许多地方家庭形成过程的重组；这些过程是 仍在继续，但婚姻的退缩、离婚率的增加和更高水平的无子女正在蔓延到 更多的背景。这些联合力量的自然结果是一个许多国家拥有 越来越大的老年人亚群，缺乏生活在一起的家庭成员的类型 社会支持网络的中坚力量。在这个项目中，我们的目标是研究老年人的家庭网络 成年人在不同的国家都在变化，他们未来可能会如何变化，以及亲属的可获得性如何变化 将通过孤独和社会孤立的机制影响健康。在拟议的项目中，我们将 通过将来自众多具有全国代表性的研究的数据与计算相结合来实现这些目标 社交网络和人口预测方法，以考察当前和快速增长的未来 没有任何在世家庭成员的老年人的流行率--我们称之为仁慈--以及 我们将测试这些趋势对现在和未来的人口健康意味着什么。使用17个不同的数据集 我们对36个国家的家庭结构和健康状况的估计覆盖了全球70.5%的人口 年龄在45岁及以上的成年人，在世界每个区域都有一定的代表性。使用这些数据，我们 将首先根据以下几个定义记录没有亲属的老年人患病率的国家差异 没有亲切感(例如，没有配偶/伴侣和子女；没有下列亲属类型：配偶/伴侣， 子女、父母或兄弟姐妹等)。接下来，我们将研究仁慈和健康之间的联系， 特别注意孤独和社会隔离机制，包括检查亲属在地理上的接近程度， 以及与亲属和非亲属的联系、沟通、转移和交流。之后，我们将使用社交 网络模拟和人口预测方法，以定位当代对无亲感的估计 每个国家的历史脉络都在我们的研究中。这样做将使我们能够对未来提供明确的估计。 不同背景下无亲缘关系的趋势轨迹，并描述一般过程和背景 它可能展开的变化。作为这项工作的一部分，我们将应用对 缺乏活着的亲属和健康的我们的预测，以表征无亲和力和家庭结构 未来几十年，这一趋势可能会影响全球健康。我们还将测试对以下不确定性的敏感度 未来的人口趋势和替代方案。该项目将如何将正在进行的变化与 从长远来看，人口结构和家庭正在改变老年人的亲属数量，地址 没有亲属关系的人口在健康和社会孤立方面的表现如何，并提供了第一个 表征全球变异性和老年家庭变化对人口健康的影响 现在和未来的结构。

Project Summary (copied from parent grant) Countries around the world are currently experiencing the long-term effects of prior demographic changes. Historical drops in mortality and fertility rates associated with the first demographic transition are causing dramatic population aging in many societies, with more to follow. More recently, the second demographic transition engendered a reorganization of family formation processes in many places; these processes are ongoing, but retreats from marriage, increased divorce, and greater levels of childlessness are spreading to ever more contexts. The natural consequence of these combined forces is a world where many countries have increasingly larger subpopulations of older adults lacking the types of living family members that are the mainstays of social support networks. In this project, we aim to examine how the family networks of older adults are changing across countries, how they will likely change in the future, and how shifts in kin availability will impact health through mechanisms of loneliness and social isolation. In the proposed project, we will undertake these goals by combining data from numerous nationally representative studies with computational social network and demographic projection methods to examine the current and rapidly growing future prevalence of older adults who do not have any living family members – what we refer to as kinlessness – and we will test what these trends imply for population health now and in the future. Using 17 different data sets from 36 countries, our estimates of family structure and health provide coverage for 70.5% of the global population of adults ages 45 and above, with some representation in each world region. Using these data, we will first document national differences in prevalence of kinless older adults according to several definitions of kinlessness (e.g. lacking a spouse/partner and children; having none of the following kin types: spouse/partner, children, parents, or siblings; etc.). Next, we will examine associations between kinlessness and health, with specific attention to loneliness and social isolation mechanisms, including examining kin geographic proximity, and contact, communication, transfers, and exchanges with kin and non-kin. After this, we will use social network simulation and demographic projection methods to situate contemporary estimates of kinlessness in historical context for each country in our study. Doing so will allow us to provide clear estimates of the future trajectory of trends in kinlessness in different contexts and to characterize general processes and contextual variation in its likely unfolding. As part of this endeavor, we will apply estimates of relationships between lacking living kin and health to our projections in order to characterize how kinlessness and family structure trends might affect global health in the coming decades. We will also test sensitivities to uncertainty about future demographic trends and alternative scenarios. This project will tie together how ongoing changes in demography and families over the long run are shifting the number of kin available to older adults, address how the kinless population fares across contexts in terms of health and social isolation, and provide the first characterization of the implications for population health of global variability and changes in older adult family structures now and in the future.