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Several variables that have been shown to be associated with the health and well-being of older people are also controlled for in the analysis. Unlike most studies that used only the characteristics of older people, this thesis also explores how demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of older people's children influence parental health. This section how these characteristics are operationalized.

Characteristics of older people include:

a. Age refers to the chronological age of older people as of their last birthday and is treated as a continuous variable in the analysis. A quadratic function of age is included in the regression model.

b. Sex is coded as male versus female.

c. Marital status is categorized as currently married and not currently married. The former refers to both the legally married and living together, while the latter includes the never married, widowed, divorced and separated.

d. Socioeconomic status is measured by educational attainment and perceived income adequacy.

a. Educational attainment refers to the highest educational level that the respondent completed and was coded as 1) below primary, 2) completion of at least primary education.

b. Perceived income adequacy is derived from a question asking the respondent to assess their ability to meet their household expenses considering the income of all household members and all the expenses for maintaining the whole household. Responses included 1) there is enough (income), with money left over, 2) just enough to pay expenses, with no difficulty, 3) some difficulty in meeting expenses and 4) considerable difficulty in meeting expenses. These categories were recoded into 1) at least enough income, 2) some difficulty and, 3) considerable difficulty.

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e. The number of living children refers to the total number of living (both biological and adoptive) children that the respondent has. It was treated as a continuous variable in all the analyses.

f. Current place of residence is categorized into urban and rural.

g. Health-related behaviours. Three health-related behaviour indicators are used in the study: smoking, alcohol use and exercise habits.

a. Smoking status of the respondent is categorized into current smoker or otherwise.

b. Alcohol use is classified into current drinker or otherwise.

c. Exercise habit is categorized into having daily exercise or otherwise.

h. Childhood characteristics of older people. Some characteristics of older people during their childhood years were also controlled for in the analyses of their physical health, including their experience of poverty and self-rated health.

a. Childhood poverty is captured through the following question: “Now think about your family when you were growing up, from birth to age 16. Would you say your family during that time was pretty well off financially, about average, or poor? The responses were dichotomized into poor or otherwise (pretty well- off/about average).

b. Childhood health status is captured through the following question: “Consider your health while you were growing up, from birth to age 16. Would you say that during that time you were: (1) very healthy, (2) healthier than average (3) Of average health, (4) somewhat unhealthy, (5) very unhealthy, (6) not sure. The first and second categories were grouped together to refer to “healthy” while categories 3, 4 and 5 are lumped together to refer to "unhealthy/average health." Those who reported "unsure" were declared as missing cases.

Aside from the educational attainment of older people’s children, several demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of children are also controlled for in the analysis.

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a. Age refers to children’s age as of their last birthday and is treated as continuous in the analysis. A quadratic function of age is included in the regression model.

b. Sex is categorized into male and female.

c. Marital status refers to current marital status and is classified into married or unmarried. Married includes both those who are legally married and those who are currently cohabiting with their partner. Unmarried includes those who are never married and formerly married.

d. Residential location of the child is also included because physical proximity facilitates the efficient mobilization of resources thus it is likely that a coresident child is more influential in terms of providing additional resources, knowledge and health-related advice to older people, relative to those who live elsewhere (Zimmer et al., 2002a; Zimmer et al., 2007). Those who live in close proximity to their parents are also more able to provide instrumental and material forms of support. This variable is categorized into living in the same household, living next door, same town, other town and living overseas.

Note that the preceding variables were used only in chapter 4 where the main focus was on the role of adult children’s education in parental health. Since the educational attainment of older people’s children is highly correlated only the highest educated child was selected to represent the socioeconomic resources of all the children. Chapters 5 and 6 look at how living arrangement concordance and exchange of support influence the well-being of older people. Since living arrangement concordance and exchange of support can be influenced by all the children of older people, the analyses took this into account. Instead of just selecting one child per respondent, the characteristics of all children are aggregated per respondent. Hence the following aggregate measures of children’s characteristics are used in chapters 5 and 6.

a. Mean age of the children. A quadratic function of children’s average age is included in the model.

b. Sex composition of older people’s children is classified into 1) both sons and daughters, 2) all sons, and 3) all daughters.

c. The marital status composition is dichotomized into whether the older person has at least one unmarried child or all children are married.

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d. The educational composition is classified into whether the older person has 1) no child with a college education, 2) some children with a college education, and 3) all children with a college education.

e. Work status composition is dichotomized into whether the older person has 1) at least one child who is not working and 2) all children are working.