Gender differences in leisure activity engagement and cognitive resilience among older Chinese adults: evidence from CHARLS, 2011–2020

Whether breadth of leisure activity engagement (LAE) is associated with cognitive resilience (CR) in older Chinese adults, and whether this association differs by gender, remain unclear. Using five waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (2011–2020), we estimated CR as the residual of global cognition after accounting for age, education, gender, residence, and chronic disease burden, and examined activity × gender interactions in generalized estimating equations (n = 7130 observations from 3293 adults aged ≥60). Cognitive and social activity breadth were each independently associated with higher CR, but with contrasting domain patterns.

Cognitive activities showed a linear dose-response with comparable associations in both genders (males β = 0.164, females β = 0.171, both p