Abstract
Objective
Childhood financial hardship is associated with depression throughout the life course, including older adulthood. However, it is still unclear the extent to which occupation, education level and household income are mediators of this association. We aimed to examine the association between childhood financial hardship and late-life depression, and potential socioeconomic mediators using community-based data.
Methods
A nationally representative sample of 3623 non-institutionalized older Spanish adults aged 50+ was used. The associations between childhood financial hardship and depression, socioeconomic mediator variables and confounding variables such as chronic physical conditions, number of close people, and loneliness, were assessed through logistic regression models. Mediation analyses of socioeconomic variables were carried out.
Results
Older Spanish adults who experienced a poor childhood financial situation were nine times more likely to obtain a lower level of education than those with a good childhood financial situation, and about three times more likely to suffer from depression. Participants’ education level mediated about 35–40% of the association between childhood financial hardship and late-life depression whereas we found no significant mediation effect of household income and occupation skill.
Conclusion
Improving access to the educational system during the life course might result in a reduction in the prevalence of depression in the general population of older adults and particularly among individuals with low socioeconomic status.
Acknowledgement
We thank Stephen Kelly for the help in English language editing.
Disclosure statement
The authors declare that they have no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Contributors
The study design was planned by J.D.-A., M.M., J.L.A.-M., A.S.-N., A.S.A., J.M.H., and B.O. J.D.-A. conducted the data analyses. J.D.-A. and J.M. drafted the article. B.O. supervised the data analyses and development of the paper. The paper was edited and reviewed by all the authors.
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.