Exploring the Intergenerational Transmission of Mental Depression in China

Family is the fundamental social unit that links parents and children from generation to generation, which in turn shapes the intergenerational correlations in almost every dimension of human daily life, including education, income, health, wealth, occupational choices and health behaviors. In recent years, economic literature has accumulated significant evidence to quantify the intergenerational correlations of health and other outcomes in addition to investigating the underlying pathways of such intergenerational transmissions. A consensus of the existing studies indicates that there is a strong correlation between parents’ and children’s outcomes, with the correlation coefficient ranging from 0.2 to 0.6. The empirical results on the underlying pathways behind the intergenerational correlation, however, are mixed across different study contexts. The evidence provided by some studies highlights the importance of genetic factors, while other studies emphasize the relative importance of the "nurture" mechanism, including behavioral and environmental factors.This paper revisits this classical topic with a new focus on mental depression. The key issues to be addressed are threefold. First, we explore the extent to which mental health problems, such as depression, are correlated between parents and children, using a nationally representative survey dataset obtained from China. Second, we examine whether the intergeneration correlation is stronger through the maternal or paternal side. Third, we explore potential mechanisms in shaping the intergenerational persistence of mental health in China. Based on a parent-child matched sample and the CES-D metrics on mental health status, we find that both father’s and mother’s mental health have significant impact on their children’s mental health. In addition, we find that parental mental health appears to have a greater impact on the mental health in the next generation than maternal mental health does, which is contrary to what most literature portrays. We then identify several potential mechanisms to account for the intergenerational transmission of mental health in China’s context, including paternalistic society and son preference, in utero and childhood exposure to depression, as well as regional and cohort effects.