A Space-Time Analysis of Rural Older People’s Outdoor Mobility and Its Impact on Self-Rated Health: Evidence from a Taiwanese Rural Village

Abstract

With the aggravation of rural aging, the well-being and self-rated health level of older people in rural communities are significantly lower than those in urban communities. Past studies hold that mobility is essential to the quality of life of the elderly, and well-being depends on their own adaptation strategies in the built environment. Therefore, this study combines three key factors related to active aging: environment, health and mobility, and assumes that the elderly with good health status will have environmental proactivity and a wider range of daily mobility in a poor rural built environment. This study attempts to track daily mobility by using a space–time path method in time geography and then to explore the relationship between outdoor mobility and older people’s self-rated health. A 1-week mobility path survey for 20 senior citizens of Xishi Village, a typical rural village in Taiwan, was conducted by wearing a GPS sports watch. A questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews were done to provide more information about the seniors’ personal backgrounds and lifestyles. The results show that when the built environment is unfit to the needs of daily activities, half of the participants can make adjustment strategies to go beyond the neighborhoods defined by administrative units. Correlation analysis demonstrated that mental health is associated with daily moving time and distance. In addition, men have higher self-rated health scores than women, and there are significant statistical differences between married and widowed seniors in daily outing time and distance. This exploratory study suggests that in future research on rural health and active aging in rural areas, understanding the daily outdoor mobility of the elderly can help to assess their health status and living demands and quickly find out whether there is a lack of rural living services or environmental planning.

The active aging level of the rural older adults with disability in China: a cross-sectional study

“…However, the average score of building up financial security dimension for rural older adults with disability was only 1.37 (SD 0.57), with 63.5% of the older adults with disability had a monthly income of less than 500 (RMB), but 24.7% of the older adults with disability had monthly medical expenses of more than 500 (RMB), and their financial income microblogging and inability to make ends meet were obvious, and their overall financial security was not sufficient. This can be attributed to the weakened self-working capacity of the disabled older adults, reduced productive participation and economic income generation (14), weakened economic contribution to the family, and increased levels of depressive symptoms, which can easily lead to negative changes in aging attitudes (42). The national government should accelerate the implementation of long-term care insurance and medical assistance insurance for major diseases in rural areas, provide re-employment opportunities for the older adults with the ability to participate in production from the perspective of poverty alleviation, organize rural third-age universities to teach health knowledge (43), and gradually improve and implement the national welfare policy for the older adults.…”

“…Health, participation, and security are the three pillars of active aging. Rural older adults with disability have declining physical functions, lack of health knowledge, cognitive bias, weak awareness, limited social and productive participation ( 14 ), lack of adequate protection of their rights and interests in material economy, medical assistance, spiritual and cultural life ( 15 ), and low level of well-being and self-assessed health ( 16 ). However, the rural older adults with disability have strong needs in terms of health knowledge, social participation, and social security, and a comprehensive assessment is urgently needed to improve their active aging ( 17 ).…”