In March the ANU’s Crawford School announced
Working Paper No. 2017/04 in the Working Papers in
Trade and Development series.
“This Working Paper series provides a vehicle for preliminary circulation of research results in the fields of economic development and international trade. The series is intended to stimulate discussion and critical comment. Staff and visitors in any part of the Australian National University are encouraged to contribute. To facilitate prompt distribution, papers are screened, but not formally refereed.’
Copies may be obtained at WWW Site
https://www.crawford.anu.edu.au/acde/publications/
Aging, Depression, and Non-Communicable Diseases in South Africa
Manoj K. Pandey#, Vani S. Kulkarni## and Raghav Gaiha###
# Development Policy Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Email: manoj.pandey@anu.edu.au.
## Vani S. Kulkarni, Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.
Email: Vanik@sas.upenn.edu
### Corresponding author. Raghav Gaiha, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, Manchester,
United Kingdom. email: raghavdasgaiha@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
” This is the first study that offers a comprehensive analysis of depression among the old (60+ years) in South Africa. By using an analytical framewrok that builds on the (sparse) extant literature and a new dataset extracted from the four waves of the South African National Income Dynamics Study (2008, 2010, 2012 and 2014), we examine factors contributing to depression of people in this age cohort. Depending on whether the dependent variable is binary (self-reported depression for ≥ 3 days in a week) or continuous (as in two indices of depression), we use random effects probit estimator with Mundlak adjustment or simply random effects with Mundlak adjustment. It is found that, among the old, those in their sixties, the Africans and Coloureds, women, those suffering from multimorbidity, those in lower asset quartiles, and individuals suffering family bereavement are more likely to be depressed. Factors that attenuate depression include marriage, pension, affluence, and trust in a community and familiar neighbourhoods.”