Living Long and Well: Cross-Temporal Meta-Analytic Evidence on Elderly Chinese Health-Related Quality of Life

China has been successful in getting her people to live longer. But, merely adding years to life and not life to years poses immense socio-economic challenges. However, not much is known about the effects of government policy and program interventions on changes in how well the elderly live over the years. Accordingly, we cross-temporally meta-analyzed 45 research reports (N = 36,352) that utilized the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) scale (SF-36) from 2000 to 2020. We found that: (1) the bodily pain, general health, vitality, and mental health of the elderly deteriorated over time; however, their physical and emotional roles, as well as their social functioning, improved with time; (2) the rising dependency ratio impoverished the HRQoL of the elderly; (3) the HRQoL indicators of the elderly revealed positive gains under the home-based care model whilst they showed a downward trend under the institutional pension model; (4) the HRQoL indicators of the elderly in economically developed areas produced mixed results; but, they all worsened over the years in economically underdeveloped areas. Thus, more investment efforts from the government and private entities are needed to reduce the dependency ratio and to improve the lives of the elderly under institutional care and/or in economically underdeveloped areas.