The Impact of Life Satisfaction on the Willingness of the Old to live in the Elderly Nursing Home: An Investigation of the Rural Elderly in Jiangsu

With the rapid urbanization and the increasingly weakened family support to the elderly,the willingness of rural elderly to live in the elderly rest homes are experiencing changes.Based on the data of Jiangsu,a relatively developed province in the east coast region of China where the aging of population is more serious but with a better social elderly support system and nearly full coverage of rural endowment insurance system,this paper use the Logistic regression model to analyze empirically the willingness of rural elderly to live in the elderly nursing homes.The result shows that the life satisfaction of the rural elderly has a negative correlation to the willingness of living in nursing home,the lower the life satisfaction of rural elderly is,the stronger willingness of the elderly have to stay in nursing homes.The willingness of rural elderly to enter nursing homes is also affected by age,annual income,health status,number of surviving son and surviving daughter.The findings can provide some policy implications: firstly,an effective social support network need be built by integrating the resources of villages and communities to provide the elderly with the services of living cares and mental comforts;secondly,the development of the rural elderly support system need be built in terms of scientific prediction of the aging of the rural population and the demanding for nursing homes;lastly,the resources and functions of the rural elderly support system need be designed practically in terms the specifics of the villages and region.