Keine metaanalytische Auswirkung wirtschaftlicher Ungleichheit auf das Wohlbefinden oder die psychische Gesundheit – Natur
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09797-z
Keine metaanalytische Auswirkung wirtschaftlicher Ungleichheit auf das Wohlbefinden oder die psychische Gesundheit – Natur
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09797-z
8 Kommentare
This is wholly unsurprising. Health ECON is full of results that are counter to populist interpretations; Ruhm’s finding that mortality is procyclical is evidence of this.
Not only are subjective mental and physical health measures only moderately correlated with actual measures of physical or mental health outcomes, but “rising” inequality is usually tied to economic growth across an income distribution within a country.
This DOES NOT mean that inequality is not harmful. It does suggest that self reported measures are not sufficient to drive any form of economic policy. It also suggests that accurately identifying less subjective outcome measures tied to inequality (non-self reported measures of financial distress, mortality rates, …) are needed.
The problem is, 1% is ALWAYS unhappy, because they never have enough… and rest of us (at least in US, huge portion of us) have no time to participate in surveys… just barely surviving takes all time and energy.
Anecdotal, but I’ve gone from flat broke making less than minimum wage (part time) to making $178k in 15 years. My mental health hasn’t really changed. I have chronic depression that troughs every winter around this time and no amount of wealth or poverty seems to affect it.
Inequality may not be deleterious but poverty itself is obviously stress-inducing and damaging. For example, neuroscientists have found that poverty triples the likelihood of getting a psychiatric disorder from childhood trauma.
i dont have full access, but if im interpreting this correctly, they are assessing the entire populations in areas of high economic inequality (both the inequally advantaged and disadvantaged). if indeed that is what is being assessed, i dont think many will be surprised that its difficult to find correlations between unequal economic **advantage** and negative mental health.
i imagine assessment on the disadvantaged population might produce stronger correlations.
„These findings challenge the view that economic inequality **universally** harms psychological health“
„theory suggests that inequality only affects individuals in disadvantaged contexts“
Sometimes results make you question your understanding of the world.
Other times they spit in the face of reality such that the only thing you question is their methodology.
If this is an econ paper why are we even talking about it, if they looked at inequality as opposed to poverty and disadvantage why are we even talking about it
Can’t wait for this study to be misquoted by mediocre political pundits!