Differences in depressive symptoms between rural and urban Chinese labor force: The mediating effects of community factors

Wanlian Li, Fei Sun and Steven Anderson

International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 2018, vol. 64, issue 4, 317-325

Abstract: Purpose: This study aimed to examine differences in depressive symptoms between urban and rural workers in mainland China and to identify community factors that could contribute to such residential differences. Methods: This study used nationally representative data from the 2014 China’s Labor Force Dynamic Survey. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews on a sample of 22,073 participants from 29 provinces of China, including 15,098 rural workers (Mage = 44.92, standard deviation ( SD ) = 14.85) and 6,975 urban workers (Mage = 43.28, SD  = 13.62). Mediators included community cohesion, foreseeable community threat, supportive network size and medical benefit coverage. Mediation analyses were conducted using Hayes’ SPSS Macro Process for multiple mediators. Results: Urban participants reported fewer depressive symptoms than their rural counterparts. Lower levels of community cohesion, higher community foreseeable threat and poorer medical coverage were related to fewer depressive symptoms. Rural–urban differences were mediated by community cohesion ( B  = −0.12, p  

Keywords: Rural–urban disparities; depressive symptoms; community cohesion; community threat; community supportive network size (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0020764018754596 (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:sae:socpsy:v:64:y:2018:i:4:p:317-325

DOI: 10.1177/0020764018754596

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Social Psychiatry
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().