More Depressed When Living Apart? Mental Health Implications of Elder Spouses’ Spatial Separation

Dramatic changes in Chinese economy has led to an enormous wave of migration, and this is a trend that has long been underestimated among middle and old aged people. Especially in China, the spatial separation of spouses is an unavoidable consequence of migration, therefore, the impact of spatial separation due to migration on elders becomes an important question. As past research has shown that health, especially mental health status is likely to be affected by living arrangements among elders, this study focused mostly on mental health implications of spatial separation on elders. We compared depression of elders who are spatially separated from their spouses with other elders using four waves of CHARLS longitudinal data. Our results suggest that in the short term, married individuals whose spouses are absent are more likely to be depressed compared with those whose spouses are living in the same household, but the difference attenuates in the long term. Also, spousal absence yielded stronger negative effect on males rather than females, and older people tend to suffer more from mental harm caused by spatial separation compared to younger people.