This study examines whether the relationship between children’s college attainment and their parents’ mental health differs for Black and White parents as they age. Data come from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and multilevel growth curve models are used to assess parents’ depressive symptom trajectories. Results indicated that parents over age 50 whose children all completed college had significantly lower initial levels of depressive symptoms than those with no college-educated children. The initial benefit was stronger for Blacks than Whites. Results stratified further by parents’ education show that Black parents at nearly all levels of schooling experienced stronger returns to their mental health from children’s college completion compared to White parents, for whom only those with a high school education showed an inverse association between offspring education and depression symptoms. The findings underscore how offspring education is a potential resource for reducing disparities in health across families.
AbramsL. R.MehtaN. K. (2019). Changes in depressive symptoms over age among older Americans: Differences by gender, race/ethnicity, education, and birth cohort. SSM-Population Health, 7, 100399.
2.
AndresenE. M.MalmgrenJ. A.CarterW. B.PatrickD. L. (1994). Screening for depression in well older adults—Evaluation of a short-form of the CES-D. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 10(2), 77–84.
3.
BarrA. B.SimonsL. G.SimonsR. L.BeachS. R. H.PhilibertR. A. (2018). Sharing the burden of the transition to adulthood: African American young adults’ transition challenges and their mothers’ health risk. American Sociological Review, 83(1), 143–172. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122417751442
4.
BrownL. L.AbramsL. R.MitchellU. A.AilshireJ. A. (2020). Measuring more than exposure: Does stress appraisal matter for black–white differences in anxiety and depressive symptoms among older adults?Innovation in Aging, 4(5). https://doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igaa040
5.
CantúP. A.SheehanC. M.SassonI.HaywardM. D. (2019). Increasing education-based disparities in healthy life expectancy among us non-hispanic whites, 2000–2010. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbz145
6.
ChenY.PerssonP.PolyakovaM. (2019). The roots of health inequality and the value of intra-family expertise (NBER Working Paper No. 25618). https://www.nber.org/papers/w25618
7.
ColenC. G.RameyD. M.CookseyE. C.WilliamsD. R. (2018). Racial disparities in health among nonpoor African Americans and Hispanics: The role of acute and chronic discrimination. Social Science & Medicine, 199, 167–180.
8.
De NeveJ. W.FinkG. (2018). Children’s education and parental old age survival–Quasi-experimental evidence on the intergenerational effects of human capital investment. Journal of Health Economics, 58, 76–89.
9.
De NeveJ. W.HarlingG. (2017). Offspring schooling associated with increased parental survival in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Social Science & Medicine, 176, 149–157.
10.
De NeveJ.-W.KawachiI. (2017). Spillovers between siblings and from offspring to parents are understudied: A review and future directions for research. Social Science & Medicine, 183, 56–61. https://doi.org/10.10161/j.socscimed.2017.04.010
11.
DharA. K.BartonD. A. (2016). Depression and the link with cardiovascular disease [review]. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 7(33). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2016.00033
12.
DrenteaP.ReynoldsJ. R. (2012). Neither a borrower nor a lender be: The relative importance of debt and SES for mental health among older adults. Journal of Aging and Health, 24(4), 673–695. https://doi.org/10.1177/0898264311431304
13.
ElderG.JrJohnsonM. K.CrosnoeR. (2004). The emergence and development of life course theory. In MortimerJ.ShanahanM. J. (Eds.), Handbook of the life course (pp. 3–19). Springer.
14.
ErvingC.ThomasC.FrazierC. (2019). Is the black-white mental health paradox consistent across gender and psychiatric disorders?American Journal of Epidemiology, 188(2), 314–322. https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwy224
GreenfieldE. A.MarksN. F. (2006). Linked lives: Adult children’s problems and their parents’ psychological and relational well-being. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68(2), 442–454. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2006.00263.x
17.
HaighE. A. P.BoguckiO. E.SigmonS. T.BlazerD. G. (2018). Depression among older adults: A 20-year update on five common myths and misconceptions. The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 26(1), 107–122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jagp.2017.06.011
18.
HaywardM. D.GormanB. K. (2004). The long arm of childhood: The influence of early-life social conditions on men’s mortality. Demography, 41(1), 87–107. https://doi.org/10.1353/dem.2004.0005
19.
HudsonD. L.PutermanE.Bibbins-DomingoK.MatthewsK. A.AdlerN. E. (2013). Race, life course socioeconomic position, racial discrimination, depressive symptoms and self-rated health. Social Science & Medicine, 97, 7–14.
20.
HummerR.HernandezE. (2013). The effect of Educational attainment on adult mortality in the United States. Population Bulletin, 68(1). 1–16.
21.
JiangN.KaushalN. (2020). How children’s education affects caregiving: Evidence from parent’s last years of life. Economics & Human Biology, 38, 100875. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2020.100875
LeeC.GleiD. A.GoldmanN.WeinsteinM. (2017). Children’s education and parents’ trajectories of depressive symptoms. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 58, 86–101.
24.
McFarlandJ.HussarB.ZhangJ.WangX.WangK.HeinS.DilibertiM.Forrest CataldiE.Bullock MannF.BarmerA. (2019). The condition of education 2019 (NCES 2019-144). National Center for Education Statistics.
25.
MiechR. A.ShanahanM. J. (2000). Socioeconomic status and depression over the life course. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 41, 162–176. https://doi.org/10.2307/2676303
26.
MirowskyJ.RossC. E. (2015). Education, health, and the default American lifestyle. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 56(3), 297–306. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022146515594814
27.
MossakowskiK. N. (2008). Dissecting the influence of race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status on mental health in young adulthood. Research on Aging, 30(6), 649–671. https://doi.org/10.1177/0164027508322693
28.
O’RandA. M. (1996). The precious and the precocious: Understanding cumulative disadvantage and cumulative advantage over the life course. The Gerontologist, 36(2), 230–238.
29.
PearlinL. I.MenaghanE. G.LiebermanM. A.MullanJ. T. (1981). The Stress process. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 22(4), 337–356.
30.
ReynoldsS. L.HaleyW. E.KozlenkoN. (2008). The Impact of depressive symptoms and chronic Diseases on active life expectancy in older Americans. The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 16(5), 425–432. https://doi.org/10.1097/JGP.0b013e31816ff32e
31.
RossC. E.MirowskyJ. (2006). Sex differences in the effect of education on depression: Resource multiplication or resource substitution?Social Science & Medicine, 63(5), 1400–1413. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2006.03.013
SassonI.HaywardM. (2019). Association between educational attainment and causes of death among white and black US adults, 2010-2017. JAMA, 322(8), 756–763. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2019.11330
34.
SeltzerJ. A.BianchiS. M. (2013). Demographic change and parent-child relationships in adulthood. Annual Review of Sociology, 39, 275–290.
35.
ShapiroD.DundarA.HuieF.WakhunguP.YuanX.NathanA.HwangY. A. (2017). A national view of student attainment rates by race and ethnicity—Fall 2010 cohort(Signature Report No. 12b). ERIC.
36.
SheehanC. M.WalsemannK. M.AilshireJ. A. (2020). Race/ethnic differences in educational gradients in sleep duration and quality among US adults. SSM-Population Health, 12, 100685.
37.
SingerJ. D.WillettJ. B.WillettJ. B. (2003). Applied longitudinal data analysis: Modeling change and event occurrence. Oxford University Press.
38.
SpenceN. J.AdkinsD. E.DupreM. E. (2011). Racial differences in depression trajectories among older women: Socioeconomic, family, and health influences. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 52(4), 444–459. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022146511410432
39.
ThoitsP. A. (2011). Mechanisms linking social ties and support to physical and mental health. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 52(2), 145–161. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022146510395592
40.
TorcheF. (2017). Intergenerational mobility. In State of the Union: The poverty and inequality report (Ed.), Stanford center on poverty and inequality. Pathways Magazine.
41.
TorssanderJ. (2013). From child to parent? the significance of children’s education for their parents’ longevity. Demography, 50(2), 637–659. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-012-0155-3
42.
von HippelP. T. (2007). Regression with missing Ys: An improved strategy for analyzing multiply imputed data. Sociological Methodology, 37, 83–117. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9531.2007.00180.x
43.
WolfeJ. D.BauldryS.HardyM. A.PavalkoE. K. (2018). Multigenerational attainments, race, and mortality risk among silent generation women. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 59(3), 335–351. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022146518784596
44.
XiangX. (2019). Seven-year trajectories of depressive symptoms and their predictors among older Americans. Journal of Aging and Health. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0898264319852835
45.
YahirunJ. J.SheehanC. M.MossakowskiK. N. (2020). Depression in later life: The role of adult children’s college education for older parents’ mental health in the United States. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gby135
46.
ZimmerZ.HermalinA. I.LinH.-S. (2002). Whose education counts?The Added Impact of Adult-Child Education on Physical Functioning of Older Taiwanese, 57(1), S23–S32. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/57.1.S23
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
