Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics 29 (1999) 115–125 The prevalence of functional disability in activities of daily living and instrumental activities of daily living among elderly Beijing Chinese Zhe Tang a , Hui-Xin Wang b,c , Chen Meng a , Xiao-Guang Wu a , Kjerstin Ericsson b,c , Bengt Winblad b,c , Jin-Jing Pei c, * a Department of Social Medicine, Beijing Geriatric Clinical Research Center, Xuan Wu Hospital, 45 Changchun Street, Beijing 100053, People’s Republic of China b Stockholm Gerontology Research Center, Box 6401, 113 82 Stockholm, Sweden c Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Occupational Therapy and Elderly Care Research, Section for Geriatric Medicine, Karolinska Institute, Noum, KFC, S -141 86, Huddinge, Sweden Received 1 April 1999; received in revised form 7 July 1999; accepted 9 July 1999 Abstract In order to assess the prevalence of the functional disability defined by activity of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activity of daily living (IADL) and associated factors in elderly Chinese, a population-based cross-sectional study was performed in urban, plain rural and mountain rural regions of Beijing. Of the 3440 subjects, 1707 are males and 1733 are females, with mean age of 71.4 7.7 years. Demographic, socio-economic and health aspects were obtained by trained interviewers. The results showed functional disability prevalence was 6.5% on ADL and 7.9% on IADL. Among the three representative areas in Beijing, the plain rural had the highest disability rate, increasing with the progression of age. Bathing and doing heavy housework were the two most difficult functional tasks. The functional disabilities were associated with gender and marital status. Our data suggest that plain rural elderly are most likely to generate functional disability, and bathing and doing heavy www.elsevier.com/locate/archger * Corresponding author. Tel.: +46-8-5858378; fax: +46-8-5853880. E-mail address: jinjing.pei@kfcmail.hs.sll.se (J.-J. Pei) 0167-4943/99/$ - see front matter © 1999 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. PII:S0167-4943(99)00026-6