Jessee Lisa, Bordone Valeria, Hank Karsten
Institute of Sociology & Social Psychology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
Department of Sociology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Soc Sci Res. 2025 Jan;125:103094. doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2024.103094. Epub 2024 Oct 30.
To date, only a few studies have investigated the bidirectional relationship in the intergenerational proximity-health nexus, specifically how geographic proximity affects older parents' depressive symptoms and vice versa. Drawing on eight waves (2004-2018) of the U.S. Health and Retirement Study (n = 17,671), we examine several mechanisms ('mobilization', 'social support', and 'social breakdown') that drive the complex relationship between intergenerational proximity and parental depressive symptoms. Dynamic panel models with fixed effects in a structural equation modeling context provided some weak evidence of a 'mobilization effect' (that is, parents', especially fathers', depression triggering greater proximity, including coresidence) and somewhat clearer evidence for a 'social breakdown effect' of coresidential transitions on parents' depressive symptoms (particularly among 'Whites' and fathers). We found no evidence to support the notion of a 'social support mechanism' (predicting that greater proximity or the transition to coresidence would decrease the number of parents' depressive symptoms).
