Investigation of the health status and life satisfaction of the elderly in pension institutions and analysis of their influential factors

Objective: To investigate the health status and life satisfaction of the elderly in pension institutions in central region of China and analyze their influential factors. Methods: The designed questionnaires of the survey on health status and life satisfaction of the elderly in pension institutions were applied to investigate the health status and life satisfaction of the elderly above 60 years old in 100 pension institutions in central region of China. And among them, 659 elderly were randomly selected. Logistic regression analysis and multiple-stepwise regression analysis were adopted to analyze the influential factors of health status and life satisfaction respectively. Results: More than half elderly in pension institutions in central region of China reckoned that they were in good health status. And above 60% were satisfied with their lives. Compared to the elderly in poor health status, those in good health status had a low proportion of negative emotions and were more satisfied with their lives. The result of Logistic regression analysis indicated that there were 6 influential factors of health status of the elderly: medicine taking (P = 0.0000), alcohol drinking (P = 0.0011), chronic disease such as heart disease (P = 0.0000), cerebrovascular disease (P = 0.0000), etc. heavy manual labor (P = 0.0000), appropriate activities (P = 0.0000), and happiness (P = 0.0000). Besides, the result of multiple-stepwise regression analysis implied that the factors, such as poor health status, bad marital status (unmarried, widowed or divorced) and bad services of pension institutions, were related to the descent of life satisfaction. Conclusion: The self-rated health status of the elderly is affected by chronic disease, life quality and mental health state. And the health status is the main influential factor of their life satisfaction.