Xueqing (Zoey) Wang

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

University of Michigan

Hello! I am a demographer studying the intersection of family, health, and aging. I completed my Ph.D. in Demography and Social Policy from Princeton University, Office of Population Research, and am currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Michigan, working on NIA-funded projects examining family availability and ADRD care trajectories.

My research explores how demographic shifts—declining fertility, changing marriage patterns, and increased geographic mobility—are reshaping family support networks and healthy aging across diverse populations. I use demographic methods like Sullivan’s healthy life expectancy and multistate life tables to examine three key questions: How are demographic changes transforming family arrangements in later life? What do these changes mean for health inequalities, particularly regarding cognitive decline and social well-being? And how can we improve measurement approaches in aging studies to better understand health disparities and forecast future care needs?

My work has been or will be published in Demography, Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, Age and Ageing, and other journals, with coverage in the South China Morning Post. I also write about demographic trends for broader audiences, including Scientific American.

selected publications

Demography

Beyond Lifelong Marriage and Spousal Coresidence: A Research Note on Racial and Ethnic Differences in Late-Life Family and Living Arrangements

Xueqing Wang, Xuezhixing Zhang, and Emma Zang

Demography, 9999

Forthcoming

Abs

We use an innovative Bayesian Multi-State Life Table approach to examine how race, ethnicity, and sex shape marital status and living arrangements in later life. Using the Health and Retirement Study (1992–2018), we estimate expected years spent in various marital and living arrangements after age 50. Our findings reveal stark disparities: White adults largely follow traditional patterns, spending most of their later years married and living with a spouse. In contrast, Black adults experience the shortest durations of marriage and spousal co-residence, spending much of later life alone or with non-spouse family members. Hispanic adults occupy an intermediate position, maintaining substantial years in marriage while also spending extended time in multigenerational households. These patterns are further stratified by sex, with minority women experiencing significantly fewer years married and living with a spouse than men, amplifying their reliance on alternative family support structures. These findings underscore how the intersection of race, ethnicity, and sex shapes later-life social and economic security, emphasizing the need for policies that account for diverse family structures in aging populations.
JGSS

Toward a National Profile of Loneliness in Old-Age China: Prevalence and Lonely Life Expectancy

Xueqing Wang

The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 2025

Abs

Loneliness presents a significant challenge for many older adults in China. Understanding the national scale and patterns of loneliness is critical to inform and guide policy interventions. This study builds a national profile of loneliness among Chinese adults aged 55 and above, illustrating the prevalence of loneliness and the average years expected to feel lonely, and examining how these measures vary by urban/rural residence and gender. This study uses the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (2011-2018, N = 25,563) to estimate the loneliness prevalence across different gender and urban/rural residences. Drawing on Sullivan’s method for calculating Healthy Life Expectancy, the author estimate the Lonely Life Expectancy (LLE), which quantifies the expected years an individual will live with loneliness. Approximately 30% of older Chinese aged 55 and above reported experiencing loneliness during 2011-2018. At age 55, Chinese adults anticipate spending about 7-10 years feeling lonely, representing over one-third of their remaining lifespan. By age 75, this proportion may increase to more than half. Estimates of prevalence and LLE exhibit marked disparities with respect to gender and urban/rural residency. Rural women emerged as the most disadvantaged, facing the highest prevalence and largest proportion of remaining lifetime feeling lonely. Older adults in China spend a significant proportion of their remaining lives feeling lonely. Marked disparities in LLEs underscore the potential role of loneliness in perpetuating health inequalities across different gender and urban/rural residences. These results highlight the urgent need for targeted interventions to mitigate the consequences of prolonged loneliness.