The impact of household wealth gap on individual’s mental health

BMC Public Health

Research

Dawei Feng¹  Yao Wang²  Rui Zhang³  Jiahui Xia⁴ 

[1] School of Applied Economics (School of Digital Economics), Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, 330013, Nanchang, China;School of Economics, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China;School of Economics, Xihua University, Chengdu, China;School of Management, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China;

关键词: Wealth gap;    Mental health;    Health insurance;    Neighborhood relations;    Medium- to long-term effects;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12889-023-16871-6

 received in 2023-04-14, accepted in 2023-10-01,  发布年份 2023

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundImproving the individual’s mental health is important for sustainable economic and social development. Although some studies found that household wealth gap may affect individuals’ mental health, few studies have clarified the causal relationship between household wealth gap between mental health in China. This study examines the impact of the household wealth gap on individuals’ mental health using data from the 2012–2018 China Family Panel Survey.MethodsThis study first used the two-way fixed effects model to investigate the impact of household wealth gap on individuals’ mental health. Considering the endogeneity, the two-stage least square and propensity score matching were employed to examine the impact of household wealth inequality on individuals’ mental health.ResultsThe results show that the household wealth gap has negative impact on individuals’ mental health. A series of robustness tests support this conclusion. The results of heterogeneity analysis show that the impact of household wealth gap on mental health is more pronounced among middle-aged and elderly individuals, residents with lower education levels, and rural residents. The results of the mechanism analysis suggest that the household wealth gap may affect individuals’ mental health by influencing the individual’s health insurance investment and neighborhood relations. In addition, the household wealth gap not only significantly negatively affects individuals’ mental health in the short term but also in the medium- to long-term.ConclusionThese findings suggest that the government should take various measures to narrow the wealth inequality between families, which may effectively improve the mental health of residents.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© BioMed Central Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2023

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