Adult Children's Intergenerational Mobility and Older Adults' Self-Rated Health: A US-China Comparison.

OBJECTIVES: This study examines whether and how adult children's educational mobility is associated with the self-rated health of older adults aged 50 and above in China and the United States.

METHODS: The analytic sample included 12,445 Chinese respondents from the 2011-2013 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, and 17,121 US respondents from the 2010-2012 Health and Retirement Study. Multinomial logistic regression was employed to examine the relationship between children's educational mobility and parents' self-rated health, and the KHB-method was used for mediation analysis.

RESULTS: Adult children's upward mobility was associated with their parents' better health in both countries. This association was mediated by child-to-parent economic support, as well as parents' social engagement and depressive symptoms in China; in the United States, parents' depression was the only significant mediator.

DISCUSSION: This study is among the first to empirically show the benefit of adult children's upward mobility for their parents' health. The cross-national differences in the mediating paths suggest that the crossover effect of children's intergenerational mobility on their parents' health is embedded within specific sociocultural contexts.