Family Economic Hardship and Progression of Poor Mental Health in Middle‐Aged Husbands and Wives

Using prospective data from 370 middle-aged husbands and wives during a 12-year period, we investigated the intra-individual and dyadic influence of family economic hardship on the levels of depressive symptoms of husbands and wives over their middle years. The results suggest that family economic hardship during the early middle years contributes to subsequent increase in depressive symptoms of husbands and wives after controlling for family economic hardship in late middle years. Consistent with stress-process theory, economic hardship influences depressive symptoms directly and indirectly through its influence on self-esteem. The results also provided evidence for the scar hypothesis which suggests that depression predicts subsequent level of self-esteem and form a reciprocal process between depressive symptoms and self-esteem over time. In sum, for both husbands and wives, our findings showed that depressive symptoms progress over the middle years through a self-perpetuating reciprocal process between self-esteem and depression initiated by early family economic hardship and through cross-spouse influences involving self-esteem and depressive symptoms.