As the population of elderly in Korea is increasing rapidly since the 1990´s and will more rapidly in the 21st Century, the demand of their health care would be a great burden to health care expenditure. Then it would be necessary to contemplate the functional status and life satisfaction for elderly to make them live more independently. The objectives of this study were find out the functional status in life and life satisfaction for the elderly aged 65 or over who had resided in urban area of two Gus in Pusan and rural area of two Myuns in Human Gun in Kyeognam Province, and to provide basic data for planning systematic health care programme. The study period was two weeks from February 6 to February 18, 1995 and the subjects were 274 elderly of which 143 were urban residents, 131 were rural residents, and the study method was by structured questionnaire. The data were analyzed with SAS/PC+ programme using Chi-square test, t-test, ANOVA, Pearson´s correlation coefficients, and multiple regression analysis. The results were as follows ;
1. To see the pattern of living together, those living with partners were the most common, 39.1% ; 37.8% of urban elderly lived with married sons, 32.2% of them lived with partners, but 46.6% of rural elderly lived with partners, 16.8% of them lived with married sons, which showed difference between residence(P<0.005).
2. Elderly who had jobs were 64.1% in rural residents, and 7.7%in urban residents, which showed significant difference(P<0.05).
3. The score of cognitive function of total subjects was 24.7, that of urban elderly was 23.8, and that of rural elderly was 25.7, then it was higher in rural ones and low for old-elders and those who had no jobs.
4. The score of PADL was 26.8 for urban elderly, 30.1 for rural elderly, and the of IADL was 22.2 for urban elderly, 25.6 for rural elderly, which showed higher activities of daily living for rural elderly than urban elderly(P<0.001).
5. The score of domestic performance was 21.9 for urban elderly, and 30.5 for rural elderly, which showed higher score for rural elderly(P<0.001).
6. The score of life satisfaction was 20.7 for urban elderly, then it was higher for rural elderly(P<0.01).
7. As a result of ANOVA for functional status in living by general characteristics; the score of cognitive function differed by age, job, that of PADL differed by age, job, education, and the pattern of living together, that of IADL differed by age, job, and the pattern of living together. The score of domestic role performance differed by age, job, marital status, and the pattern of living together.
8. ANOVA for life satisfaction showed that the score of life satisfaction differed by job(p<0.001) and the pattern of living together(P<0.01).
9. The correlations between functional status in living and life satisfaction showed that the higher the score of cognitive function was(r=0.39), the higher the score of activities of daily living was (r=0.50), and the higher the score of domestic role performance was(r=0.41), the higher the score of life satisfaction.
10. Stepwise multiple regression analysis for life satisfaction pointed out that residence was responsible for 39.9% of the variance cognitive function was for 5.3%, and domestic role performance was for 1.2%.
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