• 한국노년학
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.669-686
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate types of neighborhood environments and to verify whether the types of neighborhood environments are directly related to life satisfaction of older adults. To achieve this goal, I used'2014 National Survey on Older Koreans' data which surveyed the older adults aged 65 and over living in the community and a total of 10,281 respondents were analyzed. To determine the types of neighborhood environment, the time taken by walking from community organizations or places such as grocery stores, medical centers, administrative agencies, welfare centers, public transportation was used as an neighborhood environment indicators. As a results, there were six types of neighborhood environment: a leisure-welfare walk-limited type(20.3%), a leisure-welfare long-distance type(15.5%), a balanced proximity type(7.8%), a store-traffic type(35.8%), a traffic proximity type(10.1%), and a marginalized area type(11.3%). Compared to the balanced proximity type, older adults living in a store-traffic type and a marginalized area type were more likely to have negative life satisfaction. older adults who have higher life satisfaction were more likely to be female, more educated, get higher household income, and have a spouses or partner. Moreover, the better the health conditions, the higher the frequency of contact with children, siblings, friends and neighbors, the higher the satisfaction of life. Finding from the study highlight the importance of neighborhood environment in late life and provide implications for building age-friendly community.