Social integration of land-lost elderly: a case study in Ma’anshan, China

ABSTRACT Social integration plays a key role in the quality of life of the elderly who move from a rural to an urban area (land-lost elderly), and successful urban integration is known to develop harmony and age-friendly society. Very few studies are concerned with incorporating subjective as well as objective elements into measuring social integration levels of land-lost elderly. In this study, we measured and compared social integration levels between different neighbourhoods of land-lost elderly. We found land-lost elderly in the public housing neighbourhoods, and compared to the commodity housing elderly, they have a higher level of social integration in three aspects: having positive attitudes towards urban life, having high participation rate in activities, and participating activities with neighbours. This is because the elderly living in public housing have neighbours from similar socio-demographic groups and have more social interactions. In addition, the built environments are closely related to social integration levels of the elderly in both neighbourhoods, but effects in the two neighbourhoods present a few differences; the improvement in social environments can greatly facilitate social integration of elderly living in public and commodity housing neighbourhoods, especially for improvement in social contacts with neighbours.