Patterns of Social Participation and Depressive Symptoms among Older Adults with and without a Spouse

Abstract

The article attempts to examine the types of social participation of older adults and the association between patterns of social participation and depressive symptoms according to the marital status by using data from the 7th year (2018) Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA). In our analysis of 4,334 older adults over the age of 65 (2,945 with a spouse and 1,389 without), both the married and unmarried showed four potential class types. The four potential classes commonly showed the same categorization results ­the low-frequency religion-focused group, the low-frequency friendship-oriented group, and the high-frequency complex activity group. In addition, the married older people were classified into a high-frequency social-religious group, and the unmarried seniors were further classified into a low-frequency leisure-oriented group. The married older adults had the highest depression in the high-frequency complex activity group and the lowest in the high-frequency social/religious group. In contrast, the unmarried older adults showed the most increased depression in the low-frequency religious center group and the lowest depression in the high-frequency complex activity group. The results of this study show that the types of social participation of the older adults differ according to the presence or absence of a spouse and that the relationship with depression is also different for each type of social participation of the older adults.