Childhood adversities and gender inequality in mental health: Do gendered institutions matter?

Rich sociological literature invokes both individual life course and macro-institutional perspectives to explain gender disparities in depression. While life course theories suggest that women’s mental health is more vulnerable to adverse childhood socioeconomic status (SES), institutional theories highlight macro-level drivers of gender disparities. Integrating these perspectives, I argue that female-friendly macro-institutional contexts ameliorate gendered health disparities by reducing the gendered effects of childhood SES on adult depression. Empirically, I employ data from the European Social Survey, which is the largest cross-nationally comparable dataset containing rich information on childhood experience and health. These data thus allow me to decompose the two-way association between gender, childhood SES, and depression across countries with varying gender regimes. The empirical evidence is largely consistent with my intervention. Women experience more pernicious mental health effects from adverse childhood SES than men, but this gender inequality, and the overall harmfulness of childhood adversity among women, is smaller in countries with more female-friendly gender regimes. I conclude by implicating these findings in broader debates about the interplay between childhood SES, gender, institutional contexts, and mental health.