Downward mobility in socioeconomic status affects men more than women, with a roughly four-fold increase in risk for depression among 50-year-old affected men compared with a nonsignificant increase among women peers, according to an article in the September issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

British researchers analyzed survey responses from 503 adults who were born in 1947 to mothers in northeast England and who had family information registered at their births as part of a life-long study. At age 50 years, participants completed detailed questionnaires.

More women than men were clinically depressed at the age of 50, according to the health questionnaire, and twice as many women as men reported downward mobility between birth and 50 years of age.

However, while a woman’s risk of depression in midlife was strongly linked to social class at birth, this was not the case for men.

By the age of 50, downwardly mobile men were over three and a half times as likely to be depressed as their downwardly mobile female peers. And they were around four times as likely to be depressed as men whose social class remained the same.

The results suggest that women may be more sensitive to the impact of poor socioeconomic status in very early childhood, according to the authors.