An inverted ‘U-shaped’ pattern: the residence distance of adult children and the mental health of elderly in rural China

ABSTRACT

Using data from three waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, this study identifies a causal effect of the distance adult children reside from their parents on the mental health of the rural elderly. We use panel correlated random effect methods with instrumental variables to address potential confounding effects of reverse causality and unobserved omitted variables. We find that the impact of the distance adult children live from their parents on parental mental health exhibits an inverted ‘U-shaped’ pattern that first increases (good) and then slowly decreases (poor). 80 kilometers is a threshold of residence distance for the mental health of the rural elderly. Further analysis finds that the effect of the residence distance on the mental health of rural elderly has statistically significant differences by gender of the elderly.

KEYWORDS:

• Ageing
• rural-urban migration
• residence distance
• mental health
• rural China

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• I12
• J14
• R23

Disclosure statement

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

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ Correlated random effects (CRE) approaches be viewed as complementary to fixed effects/bias adjustment approaches, with CRE applying in situations with short panels, arbitrary time heterogeneity, and arbitrary time dependence (Wooldridge 2019).

² A 10-question version of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression (CES-D) is used in CHARLS as follows: (1)I was bothered by things that don’t usually bother me. (2) I had trouble keeping my mind on what I was doing. (3) I felt depressed. (4) I felt everything I did was an effort. (5) I felt hopeful about the future. (6) I felt fearful. (7) My sleep was restless. (8) I was happy. (9) I felt lonely. (10) I could not get ‘going.’ .

³ Individual characteristic variables include gender, age, years of schooling, widowhood status, self-rated health status of the elderly parent; family characteristic variables include household per capita income, the number of children, average age of children, average years of schooling of children, whether the adult child live with parents in the same village/house, etc.

⁴ These variables reflect economic status, activity centre of elderly of the village, the situation of high-speed rail in the place where the parents reside.

Additional information

Funding

The authors acknowledge support from the Abroad Joint Training Project for doctoral students of South China Agricultural University (2019LHPY006).