Intergenerational relationships and the trajectory of depressive symptoms among older Chinese adults in rural migrant families

ABSTRACT

Objectives: This study examined the trajectory patterns of depressive symptoms of older rural Chinese adults in migrant families and the role of intergenerational relationships in predicting trajectory class memberships.

Method: Data were derived from the 2001, 2003, 2006, and 2009 waves of a longitudinal survey titled The Well-being of Older People in Anhui Province. The sample featured 486 respondents who had at least one migrant adult children at all four waves. Growth mixture modeling was used to investigate the trajectory classifications of depressive symptoms from 2001 to 2009 and antecedents in differentiating among class memberships.

Results: The findings suggested a two-class model to interpret depressive symptom trajectory patterns: persistently high symptoms and low but increasing symptoms. Older adults who had better intergenerational relationships at baseline were more likely to have low but increasing depressive symptoms after controlling for other covariates.

Discussion: The findings suggest that intergenerational relationships have long-term impacts on depressive symptom trajectory classes. Policy and intervention implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Trajectory
• depressive symptoms
• intergenerational relationships
• older rural Chinese adults

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr Shuzhuo Li and his colleagues at the Population Research Institute of Xi'an Jiaotong University for supervising the data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 71273205]; Humanity and National Social Science Fund of China [grant number 10BRK010]; USC School of Social Work, US–China Institute.