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Title: Keeping Up with the Joneses: Income Inequality's Effect on Mental Health

Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis

Publication Year: 2017

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Abstract: Despite the large number of papers that investigate the linkage between income inequality and physical health, research on the linkage between income inequality and mental health has been sparse. Furthermore, the mental health and income inequality literature focuses primarily on national- and state-level income inequality, generally ignoring the sub-state level. I attempt to fill this gap in the literature by combining mental health and demographic data from the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth with state and county income data samples from the U.S. Census Bureau in order to investigate the effect of county-level income inequality on individual mental health. Results indicate that county-level income inequality has modest non-linear effects on individual mental health, with more equal counties being affected more by increases in inequality and increases in income inequality in unequal counties may even improve individual mental health. However, after controlling for unobservable individual characteristics, income inequality has no effect on mental health suggesting that previous models in the literature are inadequate.

Url: https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=miami1501192214441628&disposition=inline

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Authors: de Medeiros, Ian, C

Institution: Miami University

Department: Economics

Advisor: Melissa Thomasson

Degree: Master of Arts

Publisher Location: Miami, FL

Pages: 46

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Health, Poverty and Welfare

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