Mental Health and Depressive Feeling of Empty-nest Elderly People in China

Objectives: This paper reports on the first study in China that used nationally representative data to compare mental health and depressive feeling between empty-nest and non-empty-nest elderly people (over 60 years old), and examine whether the health disparities (if any) can be explained by differences in family, emotional, housework, and economic support. Methods: We used the 2010 China General Social Survey and multivariate regression models to examine mental health and depressive feeling of 556 non-empty-nest and 210 empty-nest elderly people in China. Results: After controlling for various socio-demographic characteristics, although the empty-nest elderly were significantly more likely to report depressive feeling and poor mental health than non-empty-nest elderly, the difference was only statistically significant for depressive feeling. Importantly, the disparity in both depressive feeling and mental health can be mediated by differences in family economic support and household economic pressure. Conclusions: Our results highlight the risks of depressive feeling arising from the empty-nest living arrangement of elderly people and suggest that a poorer economic situation may result from decreased mental health. Drawing upon these results, future public policies aimed at improving mental health of empty-nest elderly may need to be more targeted to improve their economic conditions such as ameliorating pension and social welfare system shortcomings.