Linking widowhood and later-life depressive symptoms: Do childhood socioeconomic circumstances matter?

Abstract

Objectives: Widowhood and adverse childhood socioeconomic circumstances (CSC) have both been linked to increased levels of depressive symptoms in old age. Beyond their independent impact on depressive symptoms, experiencing adverse CSC may also trigger a cascade of cumulative adversity and secondary stressors across the life course that shapes how individuals weather stressful life events later on.

Method: We examine whether exposure to adverse CSC moderates the relationship between later-life widowhood and depressive symptoms using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (2004-2017).

Results: Mixed-effects models revealed that both widowhood and adverse CSC were associated with increased levels of depressive symptoms among men and women. Associations between widowhood and depressive symptoms, however, were not moderated by CSC for both genders.

Conclusion: Persisting differences in the levels of mental health in response to later-life widowhood did not further widen in the presence of disparities experienced early in the life course. This may reflect the life-altering impact of this age-normative, yet stressful life event across the social strata.

Keywords:

• bereavement
• early life
• life course
• Survey of Health
• Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE)
• mental health

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

This paper uses data from SHARE Waves 1- 7 (DOIs: 10.6103/SHARE.w1.700, 10.6103/SHARE.w2.700, 10.6103/SHARE.w3.700, 10.6103/SHARE.w4.700, 10.6103/SHARE.w5.700, 10.6103/SHARE.w6.700, 10.6103/SHARE.w7.700), see Börsch-Supan et al. (2013) for methodological details.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research “LIVES – Overcoming vulnerability: Life course perspectives,” which is financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF; 51NF40-160590). B. Cheval is supported by an Ambizione grant (PZ00P1_180040) from the SNSF. The authors are grateful to the SNSF for financial assistance. This work was further supported by a grant from the National Institute on Aging awarded to R. S. Stawski (R03-AG042919-01).