Rural-Urban Economic Disparities among China’s Elderly

Tables 4 and 5 provide insights as to the organization and composition of the
household, such as the marital status of the head of the household and the “family type”.

Table 4: Marital status (%)

Urban elderly are more likely to be married than rural elderly - 69.1 percent and
59.9 percent, respectively - whereas rural elderly are more likely to be widowed or
separated. Given the age-related differences, this result is not surprising.

Table 5: Type of household (%)

Extended family arrangements are still the norm with 38 percent of the rural
households and 35 percent of the urban households following a three or four generation
organizational pattern. However changes are occurring and many of the elderly are now
living alone or as a couple. An increasing number of households are now made up of
simply one generation (single family) - about 43 percent and 41 percent in the rural and
urban samples, respectively (table 5). We would expect these families more likely to have
lower incomes and therefore to be poorer than the multiple-generation-type-households.

4. Empirical Findings: Income Disparities

The Survey records both the received income (which is virtually zero, given the fact that
the retirement age in China is 60 years) and the family income. One complicating factor is

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