Gendered patterns of depression and its determinants in older Europeans

Few studies consider multiple pathways for explaining the gendered patterns of depression in Europe's aged population, although ageing is often associated with an increased exposure to risk factors for depression, and the relevance of these risk factors is likely to differ between countries.

Based on the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we assess the relevance of gender inequalities in the exposure to psychosocial, socio-economic, and health-related factors for explaining the gender gap in depression. Further, we investigate the association between depressive symptoms and these explanatory variables by gender and analyse whether their relevance differs between countries.

Both the prevalence of depression by gender and the magnitude of the gender gap were low in Northern Europe and rather high in Southern Europe. Part of the gender gap was explained by psychosocial, socio-economic, and health-related factors but significant gender differences remained. Health-related factors were of outstanding importance for explaining within-country variation in depressive symptoms for both women and men. With regard to psychosocial and socio-economic factors, the results were less clear.

The assessment of gender inequalities in depression and their determinants within different social policy contexts enables evidence-based interventions to reduce the gender gap and ensure high quality of life for older men and women. To that end, the reduction of health-related risk factors seems to be of utmost importance in all European countries, whereas interventions in the area of socio-economic and psychosocial risk factors should be gender- and context-specific.