Parental death and offspring psychological wellbeing in Korea

Abstract

Despite increased social attention for single-parent households, our understanding about how parental death influences children’s health in the long term is less clear. This study aims to explore the association between parental death and offspring psychological well-being using data from the 2011 Survey of Health Inequalities in Korea (SHIK). Our results show that children whose parent died while growing up have lower levels of psychological well-being in adulthood compared to those who did not experience parental death. This negative association is largely attributed to a lack of social support. Specifically, children of parental death are less likely to be married or seem to have fewer supports from various social relationships in adulthood. Results also show that the detrimental influence of parental death is worse for those who experienced parental death at later developmental stages and for those who lost their father than mother. We discuss implications of the findings of the study and suggest directions for future study.