Do children's labour market experiences affect the mental health of ageing parents?

In this study we investigate the influence of adult children's adverse labour market experiences on the mental health of their ageing parents. Taking a life course perspective, we examine the trajectory of adult children over nearly a decade following graduation from a school or university. We utilise data from Swedish registers linked to the Västerbotten Intervention Programme (VIP), a survey that provides detailed information about health outcomes in northern Sweden. We utilise sequence analysis and cluster analysis to categorise labour market trajectories of adult children. Next, we use linear regression models to examine how labour market trajectories of adult children are associated with parental mental health measured in VIP. We find that labour market trajectories indicating more persistent forms of labour market disadvantage are associated with poorer mental health among parents compared to trajectories characterised by stable employment or those involving only short periods of unemployment on the way to finding a job. We also find poorer mental health among parents with children who were born late in parents' lives, and who only started to settle down on the labour market during the period observed in our analysis. This suggests that parental uncertainty about children's economic security matters for mental health in the older generation.