Economic development, weak ties, and depression: Evidence from China

Weak ties are becoming mainstream in daily relationships and play an essential role in the improvement of individuals' mental health. Despite growing concerns on depression, inclusion of weak ties is limited. To address the gap, this study empirically shed light on the role of weak ties on individual depression in the context of economic development.

A cross-sectional study was conducted based on 2018 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) with a sample of 16,545 individuals. A moderated mediation model is constructed to evaluate the impact of economic development (GDP) on the degrees of depression, the mediating effect of weak ties, and the moderating effect of residents' residence types (living in urban or rural areas).

Economic development exerts a significant direct impact on depression (β=-1.027, p<0.001). Weak ties are significantly negatively correlated with depression (β=-0.574, p<0.001), and act as a mediator between economic development and local individual depression. In addition, the residence type plays a moderating role between economic development and weak ties (β=0.193, p<0.001). That is, living in urban areas would introduce the higher the level of weak ties.

Higher economic development is largely conducive to alleviating the degrees of depression, weak ties play a mediating role between economic development and depression, and residence types exert a positive moderating effect on the economic development and weak ties.