Current health measures also have strong correlations with
depressive symptoms. Reporting moderate to severe pain is
associated with higher depressive symptom scores, as is being
disabled or having problems with measures of physical functioning.
Also recent falls and accidental injuries are associated
with higher CES-D scores. Themagnitudes of these coefficients are
also large, similar to the coefficient on recent death of a spouse. In
addition, worse cognitive functioning is associated with higher
levels of depressive symptoms. These results are consistent with
many of the earlier studies in China, referenced in the introduction
of the paper. What we can also say, is that controlling for these
current health measures greatly weakens the associations with
SES factors, driving the education coefficients to near zero and
shrinking the log pce coefficients, suggesting that a large part of
the pathways through which SES matters is through these current
health measures. This suggests that in forecasting future magnitudes
of the depressive symptom problem in China, much will
depend on what happens to measures of physical health such as
disability and pain