Many studies suggest that aging women have unique experiences in widowhood, which are different from those of aging men because of gender inequality. This study explored the 2014 Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to discover whether gender influences the factors that affect subjective well-being of elderly widows and widowers (aged 65 and over). To look at subjective well-being, I used a feminist gerontological approach to explore possible gender differences and examined life satisfaction, a life satisfaction scale, and happiness, their corresponding predictive factors, and their importance for each of the measures of subjective well-being. This study found that there were gender differences in total household income and social support from friends. Although gender did not affect subjective well-being directly, there were gender differences in the ways that education, total household income, total wealth, and social support from children and friends affected the subjective well-being of widows and widowers. / Master of Science / Aging is getting increasing attention from scholars, policymakers, and the general public. However, the experiences of widowed elders are not at the center of attention, even though they constitute a considerable portion of the aging population. When scholars do focus on widowhood, the typical approach is to examine the negative sides of widowhood, such as depression. However, this study investigates the subjective wellbeing of widowed elders in terms of life satisfaction and happiness. Specifically, this study focuses on potential gender differences in sources of subjective well-being, and how these might relate to gender inequalities over the life course. The findings suggest that the ways education, income, wealth, and some sources of social support that affected life satisfaction and happiness did differ between widows and widowers. Women’s roles as wives and mothers and their domestic labor meant that income and social support from children were important to their life satisfaction and happiness; widowers’ life satisfaction was related only to income, although their happiness was sensitive to many factors. Further, even though elderly widows had much lower income and wealth, they still had comparable levels of subjective well-being as did elderly widowers. The results point to ways that inequality in terms of the gender division of labor shaped the sources of seemingly equal levels of subjective well-being.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/101093 |
| Date | 21 June 2019 |
| Creators | Geng, Jing |
| Contributors | Sociology, Calasanti, Toni M., Kiecolt, K. Jill, Zhu, Haiyan |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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