From childhood financial hardship to late-life depression: socioeconomic pathways

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.

Keywords:

• Childhood SES
• intergenerational social mobility
• depression
• Spain

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.

Additional information

Funding

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement number 223071 (COURAGE in Europe), from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III-FIS (grant numbers PS09/01845 and PS09/00295), and from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MCIU) (grant number ACI2009-1010). The study was supported by the Centro de Investigación Biomédica Red de Salud Mental (CIBERSAM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain, together with the PGC2018-094324-B-I00 research project, funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MCIU), the State Research Agency (AEI) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Joan Domènech-Abella's work is supported by the FPU predoctoral grant (FPU16/05209) from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports. Beatriz Olaya’s work is supported by the PERIS program 2016-2020 “Ajuts per a la Incorporació de Científics i Tecnòlegs” [grant number SLT006/17/00066], with the support of the Generalitat de Catalunya Health Department. Funding sources had no involvement in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the articles; and in the decision to submit it for publication.