Marriage matching patterns associated with depressive symptoms among Chinese adults: A nationally representative age-period-cohort modeling study

Background: Little is understood about the relationship between marriage matching patterns and mental health. This study aims to examine the relationship between patterns of marriage matching and depressive symptoms among married Chinese adults, and respectively validate the effects of age, period, and cohort with hierarchical APC models. Methods: A total of 20,430 couples from the 2012, 2016 and 2018 wave of China Family Panel Studies were included in this study. We investigate patterns of marriage matching from age, personal education, parental education and especially, parental hukou status, which reflects an individual's residential status through urbanrural divide and has vital implications for socioeconomic status in China. Results: Age gap is significantly associated with depressive symptoms both for men and women, yet sorting of parents' hukou status and education presented significant relationship with depressive symptoms only among women. In addition, we found strong age effects that changing trajectories of depressive symptoms across the life course vary among different genders and marital patterns. We did not find significant cohort effects after considering other factors, indicating the stability of depressive symptoms across birth cohorts. Limitations: The CES-D is a widely used tool for depressive symptoms screening, the self-report instrument may produce results with lesser accuracy. Conclusions: Marriage matching patterns are significantly associated with depressive symptoms among Chinese adults, and these effects vary significantly across the life course. Our study sheds lights on the public mental health promotion programs from a marital perspective, suggesting that women in less satisfying marriage should be prioritized.