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BACKGROUND: Life expectancy and life disparity are 2 useful indicators to assess the health condition of a society. Both Hong Kong and Japan have one of the longest life expectancies in the world. Recently, Hong Kong has overtaken Japan and topped the life expectancy rankings. However, whether Hong Kong has also outperformed Japan in life disparity is still unknown. METHODS: Decomposition analyses have been conducted to evaluate age-specific contributions to the changes in life expectancy and life disparity for each of the populations. Furthermore, the differences between the 2 populations were examined over the period 1977-2016. RESULTS: Reduction in mortality of the adult and the old age groups contributes most to the increase in life expectancy for the study period. Hong Kong has a higher life disparity than Japan, and due to the great improvement in reducing premature deaths, the Hong Kong-Japan gap has been narrowing. However, in recent years, further reduction in mortality of the oldest elderly in Hong Kong has actually contributed to the increase in its disparity, thus widening its gap with Japan again. CONCLUSION: Increasing dominant influence of "saving lives at late ages" is very likely to cause the reemergence of increasing life disparity in these 2 long-lived populations.

In Hong Kong, extended households are declining while households with helpers are increasing. More and more couples resort to hiring helpers instead of living with elderly parents to outsource domestic work. Currently, it is not clear whether elderly parents and helpers would have the same impact on couples’ time use. To fill this gap, the study examines couples’ paid work time and domestic work time, as well as the gender gap in time use in different household types (i.e. couple-only households, households with elderly parents, and households with helpers). It uses the couple data from the first wave of Hong Kong Panel Study of Social Dynamics in 2011 and conducts the inverse propensity weighting with regression adjustment (IPWRA) analysis. The results show that couples’ total domestic work is reduced to a greater extent in the helper household than that in the elderly-parent household. But this difference disappears if couples live with relatively younger, healthy, and retired parents. Although the impact of younger, healthy, and retired parents and hired helpers would reduce couples’ total domestic work time similarly, they are different in the sense of “help for whom”: hired helpers reduce the gender gap in paid work time and domestic work time, mainly by influencing wives’ time use; elderly parents reduce couples’ domestic work time in a less gendered way, favoring both husbands and wives. Elderly parents and helpers could reduce couples’ domestic workload more or less, but whether gender equality is promoted through outsourcing is worth more attention.

Despite much attention paid to the surging divorce rate in China, knowledge on divorce patterns and trends at the subnational level is still very limited. This study aims to systematically explore social and economic factors affecting divorce trends between 1990 and 2015 at the provincial level from a tempo–spatial perspective. Traditional fixed effects panel regression and fixed effects spatial autoregression are adopted. Divorce maps demonstrated great variations in the levels and trends of divorce across provinces, highlighting the spatial diversities obscured in the national divorce trend. It is further revealed that factors such as economic development, urbanisation, and employment have augmented their influence over time. Factors that reflect gender equality issues such as the gender gap in education, employment, and sex ratio at birth have different effects across the East, Central and West regions in China. These findings provide insights into the future prospects of divorce in China.

Over the past decades, life expectancy in Hong Kong has been increasing steadily. However, the gender gap in life expectancy has experienced a comparatively high level of plateauing state. Based on data from the Human Mortality Database and the official statistics, an age- and cause-decomposition method was used to analyze contributions of main age groups and major causes of death to the gender gap over the period 1986–2016. The results showed that a female-advantage in the mortality among those aged 25 years and above was mainly responsible for the male–female gap in life expectancy in Hong Kong. In consideration of major causes of death, lower female mortality from non-communicable diseases, particularly malignant neoplasms, and pneumonia at older age groups, was the major contributor to the female-favored life expectancy. Public efforts to reduce excess mortality rates from non-communicable diseases and pneumonia among older male population may help narrow the gender gap in life expectancy in Hong Kong.

Currently, very few studies have comprehensively investigated how intergenerational relationship quality (IRQ) between older parents and adult children is related to older adults' activity engagement. To fill this gap, this study endeavoured to examine the associations between IRQ and older adults' activity profiles, not only considering the overall IRQ but also different dimensions of IRQ. We also aimed to reveal the different roles of IRQ with son(s) and with daughter(s). This study made use of survey data collected in Yibin City, Sichuan Province of China in 2018 (N = 4,211). We adopted hierarchical cluster analysis to identify activity profiles, and performed multinomial logistic regressions to assess the association between IRQ and the profiles. We identified five activity profiles among older adults: "caregiving-oriented", "employment-oriented", "social withdrawal", "diverse engagement" and "physically active". Those with greater IRQ were more likely to be "caregiving-oriented" and have "diverse engagement" relative to "social withdrawal". It also showed that structural-associational solidarity and affectual closeness were more predictive of the activity profiles, compared to consensual-normative solidarity and intergenerational conflict. Children's gender plays an important role in the relationship between IRQ and activity engagement profiles. Good intergenerational relationships might not narrow down older adults' activity domains, and instead might actually promote their participation in diverse domains. Promoting structural-associational solidarity and affectual closeness was likely to reduce social withdrawal among older adults in China.

Climate change is likely to worsen the food security situation through its impact on food production, which may indirectly affect fertility behaviour. This study examines the direct and indirect effects of climate change (e.g., temperature and precipitation) via the production of major crops, as well as their short- and long-term effects on the total fertility rate (TFR) in Bangladesh. We used structural equation modelling (SEM) to perform path analysis and distinguish the direct influence of climate change on fertility and its indirect influence on fertility through food security. We also applied the error correction model (ECM) to analyze the time-series data on temperature and precipitation, crop production and fertility rate of Bangladesh from 1966 to 2015. The results show that maximum temperature has a direct effect and indirect negative effect-via crop production-on TFR, while crop production has a direct positive effect and indirect negative effect-via infant mortality-on TFR. In the short term, TFR responds negatively to the maximum temperature but positively in the long term. The effect of rainfall on TFR is found to be direct, positive, but mainly short-term. Although indicators of economic development play an important part in the fertility decline in Bangladesh, some climate change parameters and crop production are non-negligible factors.

Despite much attention paid to the surging divorce rate in China, knowledge on divorce patterns and trends at the subnational level is still very limited. This study aims to systematically explore social and economic factors affecting divorce trends between 1990 and 2015 at the provincial level from a tempo–spatial perspective. Traditional fixed effects panel regression and fixed effects spatial autoregression are adopted. Divorce maps demonstrated great variations in the levels and trends of divorce across provinces, highlighting the spatial diversities obscured in the national divorce trend. It is further revealed that factors such as economic development, urbanisation, and employment have augmented their influence over time. Factors that reflect gender equality issues such as the gender gap in education, employment, and sex ratio at birth have different effects across the East, Central and West regions in China. These findings provide insights into the future prospects of divorce in China.

Providing social security to the population in need has become a major expenditure for many governments. Reducing the number of dependents in the social security system and maintaining a dynamic economically active population is a high priority concern for policymakers. A good understanding of the dynamics of the social security system-specifically, who enters and who exits the system-would be helpful for formulating effective interventions. Here, we made use of the data of Hong Kong's Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA), which is currently a basic welfare scheme in Hong Kong that provides supplementary payments to households that cannot support themselves financially. We proposed a stochastic model to examine the in- and out- movement in the CSSA scheme and conducted elasticity analyses. The elasticity analyses allowed us to identify the potential target groups of people that would lead to the largest reduction in the number of the CSSA recipients in the system. This analytical method can also reveal whether policies would be more effective in preventing people from entering the CSSA system or helping them leave the CSSA scheme. Our analyses suggest that targeting those aged 30-49 with children would have the largest impact. Additionally, we found that policies that aim to prevent this group from entering the CSSA system would be more effective in reducing the number of CSSA recipients compared with policies that aim to help them exit. In contrast, for the younger age group of 10-29, policies that help them leave CSSA would be more effective than policies that prevent them from entering CSSA. Providing employment for those unemployed in this younger group would be more effective. The results indicate that by tailoring measures to specific subgroups, the overall number of CSSA recipients would be reduced, thereby improving the efficiency of Hong Kong's social security system, which has accounted for more than 16.5% of Hong Kong government expenditure in

Background: Life expectancy and life disparity are 2 useful indicators to assess the health condition of a society. Both Hong Kong and Japan have one of the longest life expectancies in the world. Recently, Hong Kong has overtaken Japan and topped the life expectancy rankings. However, whether Hong Kong has also outperformed Japan in life disparity is still unknown. Methods: Decomposition analyses have been conducted to evaluate age-specific contributions to the changes in life expectancy and life disparity for each of the populations. Furthermore, the differences between the 2 populations were examined over the period 1977-2016. Results: Reduction in mortality of the adult and the old age groups contributes most to the increase in life expectancy for the study period. Hong Kong has a higher life disparity than Japan, and due to the great improvement in reducing premature deaths, the Hong Kong-Japan gap has been narrowing. However, in recent years, further reduction in mortality of the oldest elderly in Hong Kong has actually contributed to the increase in its disparity, thus widening its gap with Japan again. Conclusion: Increasing dominant influence of “saving lives at late ages” is very likely to cause the reemergence of increasing life disparity in these 2 long-lived populations.