Separated kin: location of multiple children and mental health trajectories of older parents in rural China
Abstract
Objective: This study examines the longitudinal association between the location of multiple
children and depressive symptoms of older parents in rural China, where massive rural-to-urban
migration has profoundly altered the family life of the aging population.
Methods: Using seven waves of panel data from the Longitudinal Study of Older Adults in
Anhui Province (2001-2018, N = 8,253) and multilevel growth curve models, this study
compares mental health trajectories of old parents across different compositions of local and
migrant children over an 18-year time period.
Results: The results show that older parents with a greater share of adult children who had
migrated away not only scored worse mental health on average, but also experienced a more
rapid increase in depressive symptoms across ages, after accounting for other covariates. Further,
older adults who had their most children migrated away for a longer period of time suffered from
the steeper rate of increase in depressive symptoms as they got older.
Conclusions: We suggest that it is not the geographic locality of a single child but the location
of multiple children that matters for parental mental health in later life.
Description
This is the accepted version of the manuscript and is embargoed until December 25, 2022. Final published version available at https://doi.org/10.1080/13607863.2021.2019191.
Department
Sociology
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