The Effects of Sociodemographic Characteristics, Risky Behavior, and Prior Depression on Psychological Well-Being in Young Adulthood

Maria Johnson Kriechbaum, University of California, Los Angeles
Laura Piersol, University of California, Los Angeles

This paper attempts to delineate how psychological well-being of young adults depends on contemporaneous social position as well as on the characteristics of families of origin and psychological well-being during adolescence. We will investigate the intergenerational transmission of depression through parental socioeconomic and family characteristics. We will also investigate the extent to which behaviors and psychological well-being in adolescence affect psychological well-being in young adulthood. We use data from Waves I and III of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), and take a latent variable approach to modeling. We will estimate a multilevel item-response model of depression in young adulthood. We hypothesize that the experience of depression as a young adult is a function of current sociodemographic characteristics, sociodemographic characteristics during adolescence, depressive symptoms during adolescence, and engagement in risky behaviors during adolescence.