The global prevalence of depression among older adults continues to increase alongside rapid urban development. Scant attention has been paid, however, to how exposure to urbanicity over the life course affects older adults' depressive symptoms, particularly in China, which has undergone substantial recent urbanization. Using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) with its Life History Survey, this study adopts a life-course approach to examine the accumulative and sequenced effects of exposure to urbanicity from 1992 to 2018 on depressive symptoms among older adults, alongside the mediating roles of social relationships. Multilevel regression analysis, clustered at the city level, reveals that higher cumulative exposure to urbanicity is associated with reduced depressive symptoms, particularly with constant or increased exposure to higher levels of urbanicity during middle and older adulthood. This protective effect remains robust against the potential influence of health-selective migration but varies by sex and socioeconomic status. Relationships with friends and neighbors mediate the urbanicity–depression association, whereas cumulative urbanicity exposure is negatively associated with satisfaction with the parent–child relationship and aggregates depressive symptoms. These findings underscore the importance of employing the life-course approach to understand the interplay between health and place across the life span.
Abstract This study uses a large‐scale and multicity survey dataset to examine the relationship between objective socio‐economic status, perceived social status (PSS) and subjective well‐being (SWB) among China's internal migrants living in large cities. It particularly focuses on how migrants' dual frame of reference and their intention to settle in the destination shape their PSS and SWB. Results show that migrants' PSS mediates the relationship between their objective socio‐economic status and SWB. The presence of friends, relatives and colleagues in the destination city outweighs that of those left behind in the homeplace when migrants evaluate their standings in the social hierarchy. Migrants with an intention to settle in the host city rely more on social comparison with peers in the destination city than on comparison with those left in the place of origin. This study enhances our understanding of migrants' SWB in the Chinese context by empirically testing migration theories regarding social comparison and by considering migrants' socio‐psychological diversification.
Using data from the 2016 China Labour-force Dynamic Survey (CLDS) and ordinary least square (OLS) analysis with the instrumental variable (IV) method, this study examined causal relationships between house prices (both the level and growth rate) and depressive symptoms, particularly investigating their pathways and the moderating effects of housing tenure, house price trend, and house value appreciation. Results showed that both the level and growth rate of house prices lowered homeowners' levels of depressive symptoms and the effects were strengthened by upward trends of house prices, but the rise in house price growth rate was associated with a higher level of depressive symptoms in renters. There was no evidence to support the idea that the effect of house prices varied in relation to unrealized house value appreciation or depreciation. Results reveal the mediating role of physical activity and house value in the relationship between house prices and depressive symptoms in homeowners, supporting the wealth effect theory. However, the rise in both the level and the growth rate of house prices was related to a lower level of perceived social status, which in turn was correlated with a higher level of depressive symptoms. Contrary to the socioeconomic effect theory, the level of house prices is positively related to the expenditure on urban construction and maintenance, which is correlated with a higher level of depressive symptoms in homeowners. These findings provide important implications for policies to improve mental health and wellbeing in the Chinese context.
The link between the built environment and residential segregation has long been of interest to the discussion for sustainable and socially resilient cities. However, direct assessments on how extensively diverse built environments affect the social landscapes of cities at the neighborhood level are rare. Here, we investigate whether neighborhoods with a diverse built environment also exhibit different socio-economic profiles. Through a geodemographic approach, we scrutinize the socio-economic composition of Shanghai’s neighborhoods. We statistically compare the top 10% (very high values) to the bottom 10% (very low values) of the following built environment variables: density, land use mix, land use balance, and greenness. We show that high-density areas have three times the percentage of divorced residents than low-density areas. Neighborhoods with a high level of greenness have median values of 30% more residents aged between 25–44 years old and five times the percentage of houses between 60 to 119 m2 than low-greenness areas. In high land-use mix areas, the share of people that live on a pension is 30% more than the low land-use mix areas. The findings of this study can be used to improve the designs of modern, sustainable cities at the neighborhood level, significantly improving quality of life.
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