Mental Health Among Older Parents With Newly Coresidential Adult Children

Jennifer Caputo , Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

Recent increases in multigenerational coresidence have captured both scholarly and public attention. However, questions about the meaning of parent-adult child coresidence for the well-being of aging parents remain. This paper draws on insights from the life course perspective to investigate the relationship between transitioning to coresidence with adult children and mental health among U.S. adults age 50 and older. Based on analyses of longitudinal data from the 2008-2012 waves of the Health and Retirement Study, I find that parents with a newly coresidential adult child between 2008-2010 reported higher depressive symptoms scores in 2012 than their peers whose adult children did not reside with them during this period, independently of factors that select parents into these living arrangements. Further analyses suggest that coresidence transitions transitions in the direction of the parents’ own home may be particularly distressing. These findings highlight the significance of evolving intergenerational living arrangements for the well-being of contemporary aging adults.

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 Presented in Session 194. Intergenerational Coresidence