Role Occupancy, Gender, and Depression: A Comparison of Mexican Americans and Non-Hispanic White Americans.

The purpose of this paper is to examine gender and ethnic differences in the association of depression and role resources. We develop a framework for analyzing how low and high economic and role-related resources might contribute differentially to race/ethnic and gender differences in depression. We suggest four hypothetical outcomes that capture the intersection of inequalities: Double Jeopardy, Enhanced Advantage, Social Normativity, and Attenuated Advantage. Using the NSFH, we examine the influence of economic resources (measured as income and education) and role resources (being employed and married) on race and gender differences in depression in order to evaluate the extent to which: (1) gender differences in depression can be generalized to both non-Hispanic whites and Mexican-Americans, and (2) economic and role resources have differential associations with depression as a function of ethnicity/race and gender. We find that Mexican Americans and particularly Mexican American women experience enhanced advantage from the marital role. Compared to white men, white women experience enhanced advantage as a result of economic resources. Compared with non-Hispanics, Mexican-Americans experience attenuated advantage from educational resources. Among the resource poor, we find evidence of double and triple jeopardy for Mexican-Americans compared with whites and Mexican-American women compared with white women. From these results we draw conclusions about the potential causal pathways that shape race/ethnic and gender differences in depression and suggest that these findings are indicative of the importance of going beyond race and gender differences in depression to a consideration of the social context in which differences arise. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]