Early Parental Loss, Peer Relationships, and Later-Life Depression: Cumulative Inequality under China’s Hukou System

• In Event: Aging and the Life Course Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): 2: Life course Approaches to Mental Health and Well-being

Abstract

Childhood parental loss is a major early-life stressor with potentially lasting consequences for depressive symptoms, yet little is known about how these effects operate through friendship experiences and accumulate under conditions of institutional inequality. As a result of China’s household registration (hukou) system, individuals are stratified into rural and urban populations, with those born with rural hukou facing structural disadvantages in access to resources and opportunities across the life course. Using data from the 2015 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study linked to the 2014 Life History survey, this study examines whether childhood parental loss predicts depressive symptoms in mid- to late adulthood differently between individuals born with rural and urban hukou. I further test whether childhood perceived friendship experiences mediate the association between early parental loss and later-life depressive symptoms, and whether this mediating pathway varies by rural versus urban origins.

Guided by life course and cumulative inequality frameworks, I show that both maternal and paternal death are associated with higher levels of depressive symptoms later in life, with effects concentrated among individuals born with rural hukou. Childhood parental loss is associated with lower-quality perceived friendship experiences, particularly in rural settings, and these experiences partially mediate the relationship between early bereavement and later-life depression, more strongly among rural- than urban-born individuals. This suggests that friendship experiences serve as a key mechanism through which childhood adversity shapes later-life depression in rural contexts, while urban-born individuals may have access to alternative sources of support. The findings underscore the importance of institutional contexts and perceived friendship experiences as mechanisms through which early adversity accumulates across the life course and contributes to mental health disparities.

Author

• Leng Seong Che, The University of Texas at Austin