Adult Children’s Unemployment and Parental Mental Health in India: The Moderating Role of Social Capital, Income Inequality & Community-level Policies

Rishabh Tyagi, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR)
Anna Baranowska-Rataj, Centre for Demographic and Ageing Research, Umeå University
Alexi Gugushvili, University of Oslo

This study examines how adult children's unemployment is associated with parental mental health, considering the strong familial ties prevalent in Indian society using data from the Longitudinal Ageing Survey of India, having 73,396 individuals aged 45 and above. Since India has vast heterogeneities in social capital, income and community-level policies, we examined their moderation effects for this relationship. We considered the unemployment of any of the first eight children as our treatment and measured parental mental health using the CES-D score. We employ inverse probability weighting based on the logistic regression model to form a pseudo-control group, controlling for the confounding demographic and socio-economic factors. Our findings indicate a four percentage points (ppts) increase in the probability of parental depression associated with adult children's unemployment. However, there are no significant differences in the effect for fathers (4.6 ppts) and mothers (3.4 ppts). Further heterogeneity analysis reveals that the elderly with high social participation and high monthly per capita expenditure experienced no effects of their children's unemployment on their mental health. Finally, we found significantly less increase in the risk of depression following adult children's unemployment for the elderly whose villages have the National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREGA) scheme than not.

Keywords: Economic Demography, Older Adults and Intergenerational Relations, Population Policies, Inequality, Disadvantage and Discrimination

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