2.1. Literature Review
Currently, research on the elements that influence older mental health is mostly focused on three aspects. First, demographic factors such as the elderly’s age and gender, as well as their physical ailments, have an impact on their mental health. For example, Li et al. [
11] discovered that women had a greater overall prevalence of depressive symptoms than males and that depression in the elderly with living spouses was much lower than depression in the elderly who were single. Furthermore, as education levels improved, the prevalence of elderly depression symptoms decreased. Guerra et al. [
12] examined data from nine low- and middle-income nations, including China, India, and Cuba, and discovered that as people become older, their depression symptoms worsen, and women’s depression symptoms are higher than men’s. Qin et al. [
13] discovered that mental health has a considerable socio-economic gradient in addition to age, gender, and regional features. Higher levels of education and money were linked to a lower risk of depression. Freemen et al. [
14] discovered that those with a low socioeconomic status had higher rates of depression and poor mental health. Susanty et al. [
15] discovered that the elderly’s physical health has an impact on their loneliness. The elderly’s loneliness would be exacerbated by poor health, chronic sickness, and limited cognitive ability.
Second, social activity has an impact on the elderly’s mental health. Bruce and Hoff [
16] discovered that social isolation and inactivity enhance the likelihood of experiencing serious depression for the first time using data from the New Haven Epidemiologic Catchment Area. Lower levels of outdoor and recreational exercise were linked to an increased risk of depression four years later, according to Morgan [
17]. Chi et al. [
18] found that social participation benefits the elderly’s psychological health in general, and that continuing or launching social activities, in particular, reduces depressive symptoms that are likely to occur later in life. After controlling for age, sex, time, education, marital status, health, functional status, and fitness activities, Glass et al. [
19] found that social interaction is associated with lower CES-D scores. According to Wang et al. [
20], different social activities had diverse effects on depression in the elderly. Friendship, exercise, and recreational activities were found to be useful in reducing the incidence of depression in the elderly when sample selection bias was taken into account. In the elderly, sports and recreational participation were linked to a lower risk of depression than other social activities.
Finally, intergenerational family support has an impact on the mental health of the elderly. Most experts have argued that receiving intergenerational support from their offspring lowers the likelihood of depression in older people. Lee and Xiao [
21] discovered that children’s daily care for the elderly can improve their feelings of authority and reciprocity, both of which are beneficial to their mental health. Zhang and Li [
22] discovered that emotional communication in intergenerational support has a significant impact on the elderly’s mental health. Intergenerational support from sons is very crucial in preserving and strengthening the mental health of the elderly. Intergenerational economic support, housework support, daily living assistance, and intergenerational emotional support, according to Wang and Li [
23], were all beneficial to the elderly’s mental health development. Nie [
24] found that the number of children and the contentment of the elderly in rural areas had no significant link, and the primary elements influencing the subjective happiness of the elderly in rural areas were financial support and life care for their children. However, some researchers believed that young people assisting the elderly increases the elderly’s risk of depression. Dean et al. [
25] discovered that receiving their children’s help made the elderly feel old and increased their reliance on others. The elderly’s depression level was positively connected with the frequency and intensity of receiving their children’s assistance. Krause et al. [
26] discovered that the elderly who are unable to care for themselves require 24 h care. Children who provide long-term care to the elderly experience a high degree of unpleasant emotions, which can quickly lead to intergenerational disputes and an increase in the elderly’s despair. Furthermore, government subsidies and environmental factors can have an impact on the elderly’s mental health [
27,
28,
29,
30].
There are now two opposing opinions on the impact of pensions on the elderly’s mental health. The first is that pensions can significantly improve the elderly’s mental health. Inadequate pensions, according to Adler et al. [
8], would affect the elderly’s mental health, as a lack of living resources would reduce the elderly’s ability to handle stressful life events, resulting in depression, hostility, and psychological tension, as well as psychological and emotional deprivation, but these problems would not appear when pensions are adequate. Sagner et al. and Case et al. [
31,
32] investigated pension schemes in Africa and discovered that by sharing their pensions with their families, the elderly in Africa acquired pride and respect from their family members. Although pensions would crowd out intergenerational economic support for the elderly, Kohil et al. [
10] observed that when pension increases limit cash support for children, spiritual comfort and emotional support supplied by offspring may increase, boosting the total welfare of the elderly. Case and Zhang [
28,
33] believed that having pensions could significantly reduce the anxiety and loneliness of the elderly and improve their life satisfaction. Life satisfaction can reflect the general feeling of life [
34]. Although there are some differences between life satisfaction and negative emotions such as depression, the two are strongly linked [
35]. From the perspective of multidimensional poverty among the elderly, Liu [
36] discovered that taking out social endowment insurance can significantly reduce the likelihood of the elderly falling into mental poverty. Receiving the New Rural Social Pension significantly improved the mental health of the elderly in rural areas, according to Zhou et al. [
37]. The marginal effect of the pensions was stronger for rural women and people with lower economic status. According to Pan et al. [
38], pension schemes not only reduced depressive symptoms in rural residents but also kept the prevalence rate of depression low. When it comes to depression relief, pensioners benefited more than contributors from joining the pension schemes.
The second point of view is that the impact of pensions on elderly mental health is unclear. According to Lv [
39], the elderly’s mental health index was greater under the family support mode than under the social support mode. Xie [
40] believed that China’s New Rural Social Pension had a low benefit level and that it struggled to affect the welfare of the elderly in the short term, and so it had no significant impact on the elderly’s depression and mental health. The social endowment insurance pension had no significant impact on the mental health of the elderly and could not reduce the likelihood of the elderly falling into mental poverty, according to Zhu [
41]. Guo [
42] found that the influence of social security on the health of the elderly in rural areas is weak, and the impact of the New Rural Social Pension on the elderly’s subjective mental health is unclear. Based on a multidimensional view of poverty, Liu et al. [
43] discovered that the New Rural Social Pension can help the elderly improve their income and reduce their income poverty while having a minor impact on health and psychological poverty. It is clear that no consensus exists on the influence of pensions on the elderly’s mental health.
According to a study of available studies, the views of academics are divided on how pensions impact the mental health of the elderly, with the majority of scholars affirming that pensions have a favorable effect on the elderly’s mental health. However, although some scholars, based on the perspective of multidimensional poverty, have explored the impact of China’s pension plan on the psychological or spiritual poverty of the elderly, their psychological status is only measured by the loneliness of a single dimension of the elderly. Furthermore, most Chinese researchers have looked into the impact of intergenerational support on the mental health of the elderly, but they have not considered whether pensions affect the direction of intergenerational support and then affect the mental health of the elderly. However, as China’s social security systems improve, they have become an increasingly vital force in supporting the aged. As a result, it is vital to investigate the impact of pension schemes on the elderly’s mental health. Based on this, we examine the influence of China’s pension schemes on the elderly’s mental health as well as whether the pensions will affect the elderly’s mental health through the impact of intergenerational family support, using data from the Chinese Family Panel Studies.
2.2. Research Hypothesis
Pensions, as a “safety net” for the elderly, provide them with steady and consistent economic resources and ensure that they can obtain their basic necessities for living, thus having a significant impact on their mental health. On the one hand, pensions can improve the relative economic status of the elderly inside and outside the family, reduce the economic dependence of the elderly on their children, reduce the psychological and emotional sense of deprivation when the elderly cannot cope with emergencies due to economic constraints, and help the elderly to gain self-esteem and social respect [
44]. On the other hand, some scholars found that pensions not only have a “crowding out” effect on intergenerational economic support, but in some parts of China, the elderly pay for their children’s pension premiums to receive the basic pension. The pension is indirectly transferred from the old to adults, resulting in a “reverse income redistribution” phenomenon [
45]. This may lessen the impact of the pension schemes on the elderly’s mental health. The health economics hypothesis holds that the mental health of parents is primarily determined by the factor input of productive mental health [
46]. Intergenerational support, particularly children’s spiritual comfort, is a significant and irreplaceable input factor for parents’ mental health in East Asia, which is heavily impacted by Confucian culture [
47,
48]. Pensions can be used as a legacy or reward for the elderly to “purchase” services from their offspring that are not available on the market [
32,
49]. The pensions increase the total amount of care provided by the family to the elderly, reducing loneliness and anxiety and improving the elderly’s mental health. In other words, when older people share their pensions with their offspring, the amount of intergenerational life care and spiritual comfort they receive rises. Overall, receiving pension benefits improves elderly people’s mental health. As a result, pensions can have an impact on the mental health of the elderly, not just directly but also indirectly through intergenerational support. Therefore, we propose the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1 (H1).
Pensions can improve the mental health level of the elderly.
Hypothesis 2 (H2).
Pensions can affect mental health in old age by influencing intergenerational family support.