Background: Although sons are thought to impose greater physiological costs on mothers than daughters, sons may be advantageous for parental survival in some social contexts. We examined the relationship between the sex composition of offspring and parental survival in contemporary China and...

The main objective of this analysis is to demonstrate that some of the limitations that have characterized recent studies of the relationship between marital status and health outcomes may result in biased estimates of marital status differences in mortality among the elderly. A secondary goal...

Natural disasters, such as earthquakes, can have deleterious consequences for physical and psychological health. In this study, we investigate variability in resilience to depressive symptoms in the aftermath of a massive earthquake that struck Taiwan in 1999. We analyze data on 1160 older...

Recent research has demonstrated that mortality patterns by marital status in Japan are different from corresponding patterns in other industrialized countries. Most notably, the magnitude of the excess mortality experienced by single Japanese has been staggering. For example, estimates of life...

The death of a child is one of the most traumatic events that a parent can experience. The psychological and physical consequences of bereavement are well established, and the consequences are more severe for mothers than fathers. However, little is known about how the death of an adult child...