There are a number of issues that can influence elderly life satisfaction, which can mirror their welfare. This study aims to explore the differences in elderly parents’ life satisfaction across socioeconomic characteristics and investigates how the traits of both children and parents associate with elderly parents’ life satisfaction in Thailand. This study uses individual data obtained from Thailand’s National Statistical Organization covering 2008–2015, 2018 and 2020, with a total sample size of 28,494. To investigate the association between children’s and parents’ characteristics, particularly formal education and parental life satisfaction, this study uses ordered logistic regression for the analysis. Our results show that male parents are more likely to have higher life satisfaction than their female counterparts. Parents who are employed, holding a bachelor’s degree, and living with female children are more satisfied with their life. Statistically, children’s formal education demonstrates its importance for their elderly parents’ life satisfaction. This documents the vital role of schooling in improving parental life satisfaction. Moreover, facing the challenge of entering an aging society, government agencies must take a proactive stance on creating jobs suitable for the elderly or retirees to maintain their sense of independence. The evidence of intergenerational mobility reaffirms the importance of children’s education along with their caring ability, which should be strengthened.

Low enrollment intention threatens the funding pools of rural insurance schemes in developing countries. The purpose of this study is to investigate how social capital enhances the enrollment of health insurance among rural middle-aged and elderly. We propose that social capital directly increases health insurance enrollment, while indirectly influences health insurance through health risk avoidance. We used data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (wave 4) dating the year of 2018, instrumental variable estimation was introduced to deal with the endogeneity problem, and the mediation analysis was used to examine the mechanism of social capital on insurance enrollment. The results show that social capital is positively related to social health insurance enrollment, and the relationship between social capital and social health insurance enrollment is mediated by health risk avoidance.