Abstract / Summary
China's sustained rural-to-urban labor migration has produced a population of older parents whose adult children work at a substantial distance from the home village. We examined whether the out-migration of adult children (respondents' grown offspring who had left the household for work) was associated with family functioning and subjective well-being among older parents remaining in three rural Chinese provinces (Sichuan, Anhui, and Henan), and which intergenerational solidarity pathways accounted for those associations. We conducted a cross-sectional, questionnaire-based survey of 479 rural older parents aged 55 or older, using a four-stage cluster sampling design and a 71-item, culturally adapted, closed-response instrument administered face-to-face by trained enumerators. Hierarchical multiple regression, parallel mediation, moderated mediation, multi-group analyses, and sensitivity analyses were conducted. Migration intensity was associated with poorer family functioning (β = -.21, p < .001), which was mediated by reduced associational solidarity (indirect effect = -0.142, 95% CI [-0.207, -0.082]). For subjective well-being, remittance adequacy was the strongest predictor (β = .25, p < .001), with functional solidarity as a compensatory mediator (indirect = 0.066, 95% CI [0.024, 0.114]). Normative filial-piety endorsement was preserved despite eroded contact (a-path = -0.05, ns). Community cohesion moderated the associational pathway (index = 0.058, 95% CI [0.012, 0.110]). Mothers carried larger associational penalties than fathers (β = -.36 vs. -.19; χ² = 4.81, p = .028). Reliability ranged from α = .77 to .88; CFA fit was acceptable (CFI = .964, RMSEA = .054). Because the design was cross-sectional and the sample comprised only households with at least one migrant adult child, estimates describe associations within migrant households rather than causal effects of migration. The offsetting pattern between relational decline and material compensation has direct implications for rural elder-care policy and the international evidence base on left-behind older parents in migration-sending societies.