Comparison of Depressive Symptoms and Its Influencing Factors among the Elderly in Urban and Rural Areas: Evidence from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS)

Liu, Haixia, Fan, Xiaojing, Luo, Huanyuan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1898-4103, Zhou, Zhongliang, Shen, Chi, Hu, Naibao and Zhai, Xiangming (2021) 'Comparison of Depressive Symptoms and Its Influencing Factors among the Elderly in Urban and Rural Areas: Evidence from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS)'. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Vol 18, Issue 8, e3886.

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Abstract

Depression amongst the elderly population is a worldwide public health problem, especially in China. Affected by the urban–rural dual structure, depressive symptoms of the elderly in urban and rural areas are significantly different. In order to compare depressive symptoms and its influencing factors among the elderly in urban and rural areas, we used the data from the fourth wave of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). A total of 7690 participants at age 60 or older were included in this study. The results showed that there was a significant difference in the prevalence estimate of depression between urban and rural elderly (χ2 = 10.9.76, p 0.001). The prevalence of depression among rural elderly was significantly higher than that of urban elderly (OR-unadjusted = 1.88, 95% CI: 1.67 to 2.12). After adjusting for gender, age, marital status, education level, minorities, religious belief, self-reported health, duration of sleep, life satisfaction, chronic disease, social activities and having income or not, the prevalence of depression in rural elderly is 1.52 times (OR = 1.52, 95% CI: 1.32 to 1.76) than that of urban elderly. Gender, education level, self-reported health, duration of sleep, chronic diseases were associated with depression in both urban and rural areas. In addition, social activities were connected with depression in urban areas, while minorities, marital status and having income or not were influencing factors of depression among the rural elderly. The interaction analysis showed that the interaction between marital status, social activities and urban and rural sources was statistically significant (divorced: coefficient was 1.567, p 0.05; social activities: coefficient was 0.340, p 0.05), while gender, education level, minorities, self-reported health, duration of sleep, life satisfaction, chronic disease, social activities having income or not and urban and rural sources have no interaction (p > 0.05). Thus, it is necessary to propose targeted and precise intervention strategies to prevent depression after accurately identifying the factors’ effects.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This article belongs to the Special Issue Toward Healthy Aging and Age-Friendly Communities: Advances in Methods, and Challenge for Implementation Research
Subjects:	WA Public Health > Health Problems of Special Population Groups > WA 305 Mental health of special population groups WM Psychiatry > WM 100 General works WT Geriatrics. Chronic Disease > Geriatrics > WT 100 General works
Faculty: Department:	Clinical Sciences & International Health > Clinical Sciences Department
Digital Object Identifer (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18083886
SWORD Depositor:	JISC Pubrouter
Depositing User:	Stacy Murtagh
Date Deposited:	12 Apr 2021 09:05
Last Modified:	12 Apr 2021 09:05
URI:	https://archive.lstmed.ac.uk/id/eprint/17551

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