For Richer, for Poorer: Associations Among Financial Distress, Power Distribution, and Depressive Symptoms Amid Heightened Inequality Across the COVID ‐19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT Money, power, and mental health are highly interrelated in romantic unions. To further extend the literature, we integrated the family stress model and feminist perspective as theoretical frameworks. Three‐wave, dyadic data were collected from 1093 U.S. different‐gender couples before, during, and after the COVID‐19 pandemic (a period marked as heightened economic and social inequality). By conducting a Random‐Intercept, Actor‐Partner Interdependence, Cross‐lagged Panel Model (RI‐APIM‐CLPM), we first investigated how changes in husbands' and wives' financial distress, power distribution, and depressive symptoms beget future changes in one another across time. Then, we tested the moderating roles of income‐to‐need ratios. Two major patterns emerged. First, across the whole sample, husbands' increased depressive symptoms predicted wives' increased powerlessness. Second, only in financially disadvantaged families, husbands' increased power equity predicted wives' decreased depressive symptoms; husbands' increased depressive symptoms predicted wives' increased financial distress. Collectively, our analyses highlighted the necessity of addressing depressive symptoms and power distributions in preventing the downward spiral that was more often experienced in low‐income households. Such findings can be informative in the context of global economic adversity today.