A Comparison of Health-Oriented Lifestyle of Two Groups of Iranian and Afghan Elderly (Case Study: Qarchak Elderly)

In today's world, health has become an important issue in social and demographic studies. The main purpose of this paper is to identify the indigenous-immigrant differences in the health-oriented lifestyle pattern of the elderly in Qarchak city, 2020. The research method is survey and the data were collected from 383 elderly people aged 60 and older using a researcher-made questionnaire technique. The results showed that 16.7 % of the natives and 18.4 % of the immigrants have a low health-oriented lifestyle. Overall, the majority of Indigenous people (69.5%) and immigrants (66.5%) have a moderately healthy elderly lifestyle. According to the results of bivariate analysis, men have a higher health-oriented lifestyle compared to women. Elderly people with higher education and those with a spouse has a higher health-oriented life style. There is a statistically significant difference between leisure activities, smoking and nutrition among Iranian and Afghan seniors.The results of multivariate analysis showed that the citizenship does not have a significant effect on the health-oriented lifestyle of the elderly by controlling other demographic and contextual variables. But the years of education, gender and number of children of the elderly have a positive effect on health-oriented lifestyle, respectively.The health-oriented lifestyle of the elderly depend to the social, cultural and economic conditions regardless of nationality.