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The nexus between religion and mental health in the East has been understudied, where the coexistence of multiple religions calls for scholarly attention to religious identification. This article investigates the impact on self-reported depression of an individual's identification with Christianity in a non-Judeo-Christian and religion-regulating social setting. Taking advantage of the Chinese General Social Survey 2010, our empirical analyses suggest that people who explicitly identify with Christianity report a significantly higher level of depression compared with both religious nones and self-claimed Buddhists. In contrast, there is no significant difference in self-reported depression between religious nones and self-identified Buddhists. This study supplements current literature on the connection between religious affiliation and mental health with a particular interest in East Asia, suggesting that the consequence on mental health of religious identification is contingent on a religion's social status, and a religion's marginal position may turn religious identification into a detrimental psychological burden.

This study examines the association of three different SES indicators (education, economic independence, and household per-capita income) with mortality, using a large, nationally representative longitudinal sample of 12,437 Chinese ages 65 and older. While the results vary by measures used, we find overall strong evidence for a negative association between SES and all-cause mortality. Exploring the association between SES and cause-specific mortality, we find that SES is more strongly related to a reduction of mortality from more preventable causes (i.e., circulatory disease and respiratory disease) than from less preventable causes (i.e., cancer). Moreover, we consider mediating causal factors such as support networks, health-related risk behaviors, and access to health care in contributing to the observed association between SES and mortality. Among these mediating factors, medical care is of greatest importance. This pattern holds true for both all-cause and cause-specific mortality.

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