Financial strain, social relations, and psychological distress among older people: a cross-cultural analysis

Objectives. This article examines how financial strain and social relations may independently and jointly influence psychological distress among older people in four nations. Methods. Data from four Western Pacific nations (N = 3,277) are used to test additive and multiplicative models of the relationships between financial strain, social relations, and psychological distress. Results. Financial strain is associated with higher levels of psychological distress in three of the four nations. Inter-active models of the effects of financial strain and social relations on distress were uncovered in three of the four na-tions, but the type of social relation influencing the strain-distress relationship varied. Subjective health and IADLs were significant predictors of psychological distress in all four nations. Discussion. Findings suggest that although financial strain is quite likely to lead to psychological distress among el-ders, this can be mitigated, at least in part, by social relationships. Modernization was not associated with higher psy-chological distress. THE question of how social relations influence the psy-chological distress of elders has attracted considerable attention in the past two decades, much of it as part of the avalanche of research on caregiving. The findings from this literature have been both insightful and inconsistent. Per