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 < 0.001; Activity × Gender interaction p = 0.435). Social activities followed a quadratic dose-response peaking at approximately three activity types. In gender-stratified models, the social-activity association was concentrated in males ( β = 0.164, p < 0.001) and was not significant among females ( β = 0.032, p = 0.323; activity × gender interaction β = −0.111, p = 0.020), despite higher social participation rates among women. Lagged analyses supported temporal precedence. These findings indicate that the resilience associations of LAE breadth in older Chinese adults are domain- and gender-dependent: cognitive activity breadth was positively associated with CR in both genders, whereas this association was concentrated in men for social activities. These findings warrant further investigation of whether the content, context, or measurement of social engagement contributes to the observed gender difference.