Depressive Symptoms of Chinese Children: Prevalence and Correlated Factors among Subgroups

Mi Zhou, Guangsheng Zhang, Scott Rozelle, Kaleigh Kenny and Hao Xue
Additional contact information
Mi Zhou: College of Economics and Management, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang 110866, China
Guangsheng Zhang: School of Business, Liaoning University, Shenyang 110031, China
Kaleigh Kenny: Rural Education Action Program, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
Hao Xue: School of Economics and Management, Northwest University, Xi’an 710069, China

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 2, 1-10

Abstract: Economic growth and socioeconomic changes have transformed nearly every aspect of childhood in China, and many are worried by the increasing prevalence of mental health issues among children, particularly depression. To provide insight into the distribution of depressive symptoms among children in China and identify vulnerable groups, we use data from the 2012 China Family Panel Survey (CFPS), a survey that collected data from a large, nationally representative sample of the Chinese population. Using the CFPS data, we construct a sample of 2679 children aged 10–15 years old from 25 provinces in China. According to our results, the incidence of depression varies by geographic area. Specifically, we find that rates of depressive symptoms are significantly lower in urban areas (14% of sample children) than in rural areas (23% of sample children). Our results also show that children from ethnic minorities, from poorer families, and whose parents are depressed are more likely to be depressed than other children. In contrast, we find that depressive symptoms do not vary by gender.

Keywords: childhood depression; China; depressive symptoms; left-behind children; migrant children (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/2/283/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/2/283/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:15:y:2018:i:2:p:283-:d:130609

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().