Understanding the Effect of Social Capital on the Depression of Urban Chinese Adolescents: An Integrative Framework

Abstract

Using data from an ongoing longitudinal study of 5,164 adolescents and their parents from seven cities in mainland China, this study investigated how social capital embedded in the family and the community, together with family human capital and financial capital, influenced the depressive symptoms of urban Chinese adolescents within an integrative framework. The structural equation modeling results suggested that higher community social capital was associated with lower level of adolescent depressive symptoms and was the strongest predictor among all these contextual factors. Family social capital played a significant role in mediating the effects of all other contextual factors on adolescent depressive symptoms. Unexpectedly, higher family financial capital predicted increased depressive symptoms both directly and indirectly through its negative effect on family social capital. As for gender, female adolescents reported more depressive symptoms as a result of less available family social capital. Implications of these findings for theory, practice, policy, and future research are discussed.

Social capital and the mental health of children in rural China with different experiences of parental migration

“…The sum scores of these two scales were used as observed indicators to form the latent construct of family social capital. These measures have been used in previous studies in the Chinese context with their validity and reliability established (Wu et al, 2010b(Wu et al, , 2011.…”

Social capital in promoting the psychosocial adjustment of chinese migrant children: interaction across contexts

“…A large body of literature has demonstrated the significant role of social capital in the development of children and adolescents, including psychosocial adjustment (Coleman, 1988(Coleman, , 1990Dorsey & Forehand, 2003;Morrow, 1999;Portes, 1998;Zhou & Bankston, 1994). Recent studies incorporate social capital embedded in various social contexts (e.g., family, school, neighborhood) into one integrative framework in order to examine and distinguish the effects of each dimension operating simultaneously (Wu et al, 2010). However, the conditional nature of these effects has yet to be explored.…”

Negative Attachment Cognitions and Emotional Distress in Mainland Chinese Adolescents: A Prospective Multiwave Test of Vulnerability-Stress and Stress Generation Models

“…As with North American and European populations (Avenevoli, Knight, Kessler & Merikangas, 2008), adolescence marks a critical period with regard to the development of depression in mainland China (Wu et al, 2010). Recent research conducted with adolescents (ages 13–22) in Shandong Province reported that 16.9% of youth reported severe symptoms of depression (Liu, Ma, Kurita & Tang, 1999), while other research conducted with adolescents (ages 13–16) in the Zhejiang Province reported that 33% of youth exhibited a history of severe depressive symptoms (Hesketh, Ding, & Jenkins, 2002).…”