With the aim of probing into the life satisfaction of retired urban elderly in China with respect to old age support systems, this study examines the effect of pension reform with its existing inequalities across demographic and social groups on the life satisfaction of retired urban residents. The complementary role of intergenerational assistance and self-support on the life satisfaction of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of the pension scheme was analyzed using an ordered logit regression model with 2015 national representative data from China’s Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey. Our sample consists of a cross-sectional data set of 3815 retired urban elderly aged 60 and above. The empirical results depict that though enjoying benefits from the public pension scheme generally enhances life satisfaction, beneficiaries of the Government and Institution Pension and Enterprise Employee Basic Pension are more advantaged than beneficiaries under the Urban-Rural Social Pension Scheme. The pension inequalities existing at provincial levels and across social groups such as gender and residence registration status also affect life satisfaction adversely. Women and rural ‘Hukou’ registered retired urban residents are at an apparent disadvantage. Getting financial and emotional support from children broadly improves life satisfaction. Non-beneficiaries of the public pension benefit more from the financial support of children than public pension beneficiaries. There is also a positive effect of cohabiting with children on life satisfaction when retired urban residents are single as compared to being married. Financial and physical self-support ability in forms of good health, home ownership and wealth management enhance life satisfaction significantly. However, largely, retired urban elderly have a higher life satisfaction when they are financially independent of children and are supported by state pension schemes. Our findings indicate that self-support ability of the elderly together with pension benefits are more effective in enhancing the life satisfaction of retired urban elderly in China. It is recommended that government institute policies to promote personal finance initiatives by the elderly while improving the pension scheme and reducing pension inequality.

The pursuit of achieving Goal 3 of the 2030 United Nations agenda for Sustainable Development, "ensuring healthy lives, achieving universal health coverage and promoting wellbeing for all", has been a cardinal concern of governments and policy makers. The rural-urban divide in China has resulted in equality of health care distribution. To address this anomaly, the government of China has put in place the New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS). This intervention aims at ensuring the equitable distribution and affordability of health care in rural areas. Despite this measure, certain drawbacks in its implementation affect overall life satisfaction. Rural-urban migration resulting in age distribution gaps has also been generally identified by a plethora of literature to hamper intergenerational interaction, which is essential to overall life satisfaction especially for the elderly. However, little is known about the extent to which the NCMS, coupled with its drawbacks and intergenerational interaction, affect the overall life satisfaction of the rural elderly in China.Using an ordered response model, this study presents a thorough analysis on the life satisfaction of rural elderly making comparison across age groups and residence status sub-samples using a panel data from the two waves, 2011 and 2013, from China's Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey. The empirical results indicate that though the NCMS is indeed beneficial to promoting health and overall life satisfaction of rural elderly, there are some attendant limitations. We also find that intergenerational interaction in the form of frequent communication and financial assistance from children who fall within the non-cohabiting category promotes life satisfaction of the rural elderly. The degree of importance however varies across the aforementioned groups.

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