Poverty and Mental Health across the Adult Life Course

Jennifer Moren-Cross, Duke University

This study employs a life course framework to examine patterns of poverty and depressive symptoms using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort. While it is well-established that there is generally a robust, inverse relationship between socioeconomic status and mental health outcomes, much remains to be explained. Guided by hypotheses concerning the timing and duration of poverty on adult depressive symptoms, preliminary findings suggest that both recent and accumulated poverty over the life course are related to depressive symptoms, but such symptoms are only weakly associated with subsequent poverty.