The linked lives in Chinese families: The impact of adult offspring’s divorce on parents’ depressive symptoms

Objectives: In context of prolonged life expectancies and rising divorce rates in China, this study explores how offspring’s divorce is associated with parents’ depressive symptoms. Methods: : Using data from the four waves of Chinese Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) conducted during 2011-2018, we apply a two-way fixed-effects model with 134,230 observations from 50,264 parent-child pairs to examine the association, perform stratified analyses to investigate the heterogeneity, and replace dependent variable with potential mediators to explore mechanisms. Results: : adult offspring’s divorce is associated with increased parent’s depressive symptoms. The association is more salient for sons’ divorces and more salient among fathers. It’s also more salient for healthier parents in rural areas. After divorce, adult children are more likely to live with parents and their parents make more financial transfers to children. Discussion: In China, offspring’s divorce impairs their parents’ mental health by affecting intergenerational economic allocations and living arrangements.