Why dance makes me happy? Older people’s square dance participation, social adaptation and subjective well-being

Square dancing has been used as an increasingly important intervention strategy to promote older people’s subjective well-being (SWB) in China, while voices of dissent have gradually arisen. Using data from China, this paper aims to estimate the effect of square dance participation on older people’s SWB by applying an instrumental variables approach and further identifies the mechanism linking them. The result suggests a significantly positive effect of square dance participation on older people’s SWB, whereas such an effect only exists for the urban female elderly not living alone. Important mechanisms linking them could be the improvement of social adaptation in the aging process, specifically including health adaptation, interpersonal adaptation, role transition adaptation, and social change adaptation. These findings confirms the effectiveness of square dance exercise interventions and offer further arguments for including dance on the agenda of active aging.