By Choi Sung-jin
Wives whose husbands voluntarily stopped working suffer more severe depression than those who continue to work or were forced to quit, a study shows. Declining household income was the main cause of a deepened mood of melancholy.
The study, conducted by a researcher at Seoul National University’s College of Medicine, analyzed depression caused by retirement, based on a survey of 5,937 people 45 or older.
It found wives with husbands who quit their jobs were 70 percent more likely to suffer depression than those with working husbands. And wives whose husbands were forced to leave their jobs were 29 percent more prone to get the blues than those with husbands who kept their jobs.
“If husbands meddle in household affairs after retirement, wives can get stressed,” said Kang Mo-yeol, who conducted the research. “In the end, couples cannot adapt themselves to post-retirement lives, which leads to husband-wife conflicts and causes depression for wives.”
It was noteworthy that the depression-risk gap sharply narrowed after excluding participants’ assets and family incomes. The risk of depression among wives who had husbands who quit voluntarily halved to 35 percent, while that of wives whose spouses were forced to resign were little different from the wives with working husbands.
“That the risks drastically fall when asset and income factors were corrected indicates how deep their economic stresses are,” Kang said.
Meanwhile, husbands showed little difference in the risk of depression whether their wives voluntarily quit their jobs or were forced to. The study said stereotypes of the traditional roles of men and women were behind the different acceptance of spouses’ retirement between the sexes.