TY - JOUR T1 - The relationship between early life urbanicity and depression in late adulthood: evidence from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe JF - BMJ Open JO - BMJ Open DO - 10.1136/bmjopen-2018-028090 VL - 9 IS - 9 SP - e028090 AU - Daniel Howdon AU - Jochen Mierau AU - Samuel Liew Y1 - 2019/09/01 UR - http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/9/9/e028090.abstract N2 - Objectives We aimed to study the association of childhood urbanicity with depressive symptoms in late adulthood.Design, setting and participants We used linear and logistic regressions to analyse data drawn from 20 400 respondents from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, a panel dataset incorporating a representative sample of the 50+ population in 13 European countries.Outcomes and analysis Childhood urbanicity was determined using self-reports of the respondents’ circumstances at age 10, and late-adulthood depression using the EURO-D scale. We conditioned on circumstances early in life as well as later in life, most importantly late-adulthood urbanicity. We estimated the associations using linear regression models and limited dependent variable models.Results A pooled regression of both men and women suggested that childhood urbanicity is associated non-monotonically with depression in late adulthood and is particularly apparent for those spending their childhoods in suburban settings. We found that individuals who spend the longest time in their childhood in a suburban home exhibit an average increase in probability of 3.4 (CI 1.1 to 5.7) percentage points in reporting four or more depressive symptoms. The association was robust to the inclusion of a host of household characteristics associated with childhood urbanicity and was independent of current urbanicity and current income. When broken down by gender, we found some evidence of associations between depressive outcomes and urban living for men, and stronger evidence of such associations with urban and suburban living for women who exhibit an increase of 5.6 (CI 2.2 to 9.0) percentage points in reporting four or more depressive symptoms.Conclusions Our analysis reveals a relationship between childhood urbanicity and depression in late adulthood. The evidence presented on the nature of this relationship is not straightforward but is broadly suggestive of a link, differing by gender, between greater urbanicity and higher levels of depressive symptoms. The life-long nature of this association may potentially inform policy agendas aimed at improving urban and suburban living conditions. ER -