Life course socioeconomic position and incidence of mid–late life depression in China and England: a comparative analysis of CHARLS and ELSA

Milagros A Ruiz · Yaoyue Hu · Pekka Martikainen · Martin Bobák

36 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Epidemiology & Community Health

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Health disparities and outcomes Mental Health Treatment and Access Aging, Health, and Disability

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Despite the growing prevalence of depression in the Chinese elderly, there is conflicting evidence of life course socioeconomic position (SEP) and depression onset in China, and whether this association is akin to that observed in Western societies. We compared incident risk of mid-late life depression by childhood and adulthood SEP in China and England, a country where mental health inequality is firmly established. METHODS: Depression-free participants from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (N=8508) and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (N=6184) were studied over 4 years. Depressive symptoms were classified as incident cases using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale criteria. Associations between SEP (education, wealth, residence ownership and childhood/adolescent deprivation) and depression symptom onset were assessed using Cox proportional hazards models. In China, we also investigated children's government employment status as a SEP marker. RESULTS: Higher education and wealth predicted lower incidence of depression in both countries. The association with non-ownership of residence appeared stronger in England (HR 1.61, 95% CI 1.41 to 1.86) than in China (HR 1.11, 95% CI 0.95 to 1.29), while that with childhood/adolescent deprivation was stronger in China (HR 1.43, 95% CI 1.29 - 1.60) than in England (HR 1.33, 95% CI 0.92 to 1.92). Chinese adults whose children were employed in high-status government jobs, had lower rates of depression onset. CONCLUSIONS: Consistent findings from China and England demonstrate that SEP is a pervasive determinant of mid-late life depression in very diverse social contexts. Together with conventional measures of SEP, the SEP of children also affects the mental health of older Chinese.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 36 citations exist upstream.

References

2003Socioeconomic Inequalities in Depression: A Meta-Analysis 2014Social determinants of mental health 1997BRIEF COMMUNICATION.1999A Revised CES-D Measure of Depressive Symptoms and a DSM-Based Measure of Major Depressive Episodes in the Elderly 2013Psychometric Properties of the CES-D-10 in a Psychiatric Sample 2000Cross-national comparisons of the prevalences and correlates of mental disorders.2014Depressive symptoms and SES among the mid-aged and elderly in China: Evidence from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study national baseline 2017Intergenerational mobility in Britain

Cited by

2020The Mediating Effect of Community Identity between Socioeconomic Status and Sense of Gain in Chinese Adults 2023Economic development, weak ties, and depression: Evidence from China 2021Community Environment Perception on Depression: The Mediating Role of Subjective Social Class

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.