COVID-19 and depressive symptoms among older adults in South Korea

Abstract

This study analyzed the effects of COVID-19 and gender differences in depressive symptoms in older adults using data from the 7th (2018) and 8th (2020) surveys of the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging. A panel two-way-fixed effects model was used to control for individual fixed effects and time effects. A 0.1% point increase in the intensity of COVID-19 was associated with an average increase of 1.5 points out of 10 on the Center of Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, 10-item version (CES-D10) among older adults. The increase in depression was greater among women. Depressive factors due to COVID-19 among older adults are more likely to be related to negative emotions or interpersonal relationships than to physical and behavioral decline. Depression prevention policies for older adults should be informed by these gender differences. While older men require assistance with instrumental activities of daily living such as housework, meal preparation, etc., older women should be provided with online socialization opportunities to interact with others.

Keywords:

• CES-D
• COVID-19
• depression
• older adults
• panel data

Acknowledgments

We sincerely thank the two anonymous reviewers and the editor for their helpful comments. We would like to thank Sungmun Choi and Youngseok Park for their comments

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The datasets used in the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was supported by Konkuk University in 2022.