What question did this study set out to answer?

This study aims to understand how marital and fertility trajectories affect depressive symptoms and physical functional limitations in Chinese women over time.

July 12, 2026BMC Public HealthOpen Access

Family life-course trajectories and longitudinal changes in depressive symptoms and physical functional limitations in Chinese women from midlife to early old age: a 7-year longitudinal cohort study

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Authors

CCCheng‐Chuan ChenAffiliated Hospital of Southwest Medical University NZNa ZhouFirst Affiliated Hospital of Chengdu Medical College XWXiao-Wen WuAffiliated Hospital of Southwest Medical University

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Implication

Longitudinal cohort study examines health impacts of marital and fertility trajectories in Chinese women, suggesting implications for later-life outcomes.

Key Points

This study aims to understand how marital and fertility trajectories affect depressive symptoms and physical functional limitations in Chinese women over time.
Analyzed data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) with 5,871 women aged 45-65 at baseline.
Used sequence-based methods to reconstruct marital and fertility histories and applied clustering for trajectory typologies.
Utilized linear mixed-effects models to estimate associations with longitudinal health outcomes.
Early marriage and high parity were linked to higher baseline depressive symptoms (β = 0.858, 95% CI: 0.560 to 1.157) and physical limitations (β = 0.206, 95% CI: 0.143 to 0.269).
The Stable Marriage & One-Child group exhibited lower baseline depressive symptoms (β = -0.858, 95% CI: -1.271 to -0.445) and lower functional limitations (β = -0.163, 95% CI: -0.251 to -0.076).
Associations remained consistent across robustness and sensitivity analyses.

Cite This Study

Chen et al. (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a532e624f7abc118adecbb2 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-026-28482-y

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Implication

Longitudinal cohort study examines health impacts of marital and fertility trajectories in Chinese women, suggesting implications for later-life outcomes.

Family life-course trajectories and longitudinal changes in depressive symptoms and physical functional limitations in Chinese women from midlife to early old age: a 7-year longitudinal cohort study

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Cite This Study

Family life-course trajectories and longitudinal changes in depressive symptoms and physical functional limitations in Chinese women from midlife to early old age: a 7-year longitudinal cohort study

Discussion

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Implication

Key Points

Cite This Study

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