互联网使用对老年人主观生活质量的影响——来自中国老年社会追踪调查(CLASS)的证据

The Impact of Internet Use on the Subjective Perception of Life Quality of the Elderly:Evidence from the Chinese Longitudinal Aging Social Survey

经济增长和政府治理的最终目标是增加国民福祉,提高老年人的生活质量是我国民生领域的重要工作之一。基于2016~2018年中国老年社会追踪调查数据的研究发现,互联网使用能够显著提高老年人的主观生活质量。采用稳健性估计与工具变量克服内生性问题后,该研究结论依然成立。互联网使用对不同老年群体主观生活质量的影响存在异质性,社会网络是互联网影响老年人主观生活质量的中介变量,即互联网使用通过维系和扩大老年人社会网络提高了主观生活质量。因此,应加快互联网等信息技术基础设施建设,提高老年人的互联网使用能力,进一步强化互联网使用对老年群体的幸福激励作用。

To some extent,improving the quality of life for the elderly is to increase national welfare,which is regarded as the ultimate destination of economic growth and good governance practices.Based on the longitudinal data from China Longitudinal Aging Social Surveys in 2016 and 2018,this paper examines the impact of internet use on the subjective perception of the quality of life for the elderly.The result shows that the use of the Internet can significantly improve the subjective perception of the quality of life for the elderly.After using instrumental variable estimation to overcome the endogenous bias of the model,the results show that the above conclusions are still valid under various robustness tests.Heterogeneity analysis shows that the impact of Internet use on the subjective perception of the quality of life varies with age,urbanization,education level and other variables.Mechanism analysis shows that social network mediates the influence of the Internet use on the subjective perception of the quality of life for the elderly.In other words,internet use improves the subjective perception of the quality of life for the elderly by maintaining and expanding their social networks.Therefore,it is necessary to accelerate the construction of Internet and other information technology infrastructure,improve the ability of the elderly in using the internet,and further strengthen the role of internet use in fostering the feeling of happiness from the elderly.