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Why does Income Relate to Depressive Symptoms? Testing the Income Rank Hypothesis Longitudinally

This paper reports a test of the relative income rank hypothesis of depression, according to which it is the rank position of an individual’s income amongst a comparison group, rather than the individual’s absolute income, that will be associated with depressive symptoms. A new methodology is develo...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Osafo Hounkpatin, Hilda, Wood, Alex M., Brown, Gordon D. A., Dunn, Graham
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4600095/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26478651
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11205-014-0795-3
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author Osafo Hounkpatin, Hilda
Wood, Alex M.
Brown, Gordon D. A.
Dunn, Graham
author_facet Osafo Hounkpatin, Hilda
Wood, Alex M.
Brown, Gordon D. A.
Dunn, Graham
author_sort Osafo Hounkpatin, Hilda
collection PubMed
description This paper reports a test of the relative income rank hypothesis of depression, according to which it is the rank position of an individual’s income amongst a comparison group, rather than the individual’s absolute income, that will be associated with depressive symptoms. A new methodology is developed to test between psychosocial and material explanations of why income relates to well-being. This method was used to test the income rank hypothesis as applied to depressive symptoms. We used data from a cohort of 10,317 individuals living in Wisconsin who completed surveys in 1992 and 2003. The utility assumed to arise from income was represented with a constant relative risk aversion function to overcome limitations of previous work in which inadequate specification of the relationship between absolute income and well-being may have inappropriately favoured relative income specifications. We compared models in which current and future depressive symptoms were predicted from: (a) income utility alone, (b) income rank alone, (c) the transformed difference between the individual’s income and the mean income of a comparison group and (d) income utility, income rank and distance from the mean jointly. Model comparison overcomes problems involving multi-collinearity amongst the predictors. A rank-only model was consistently supported. Similar results were obtained for the association between depressive symptoms and wealth and rank of wealth in a cohort of 32,900 British individuals who completed surveys in 2002 and 2008. We conclude that it is the rank of a person’s income or wealth within a social comparison group, rather than income or wealth themselves or their deviations from the mean within a reference group, that is more strongly associated with depressive symptoms.
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spelling pubmed-46000952015-10-14 Why does Income Relate to Depressive Symptoms? Testing the Income Rank Hypothesis Longitudinally Osafo Hounkpatin, Hilda Wood, Alex M. Brown, Gordon D. A. Dunn, Graham Soc Indic Res Article This paper reports a test of the relative income rank hypothesis of depression, according to which it is the rank position of an individual’s income amongst a comparison group, rather than the individual’s absolute income, that will be associated with depressive symptoms. A new methodology is developed to test between psychosocial and material explanations of why income relates to well-being. This method was used to test the income rank hypothesis as applied to depressive symptoms. We used data from a cohort of 10,317 individuals living in Wisconsin who completed surveys in 1992 and 2003. The utility assumed to arise from income was represented with a constant relative risk aversion function to overcome limitations of previous work in which inadequate specification of the relationship between absolute income and well-being may have inappropriately favoured relative income specifications. We compared models in which current and future depressive symptoms were predicted from: (a) income utility alone, (b) income rank alone, (c) the transformed difference between the individual’s income and the mean income of a comparison group and (d) income utility, income rank and distance from the mean jointly. Model comparison overcomes problems involving multi-collinearity amongst the predictors. A rank-only model was consistently supported. Similar results were obtained for the association between depressive symptoms and wealth and rank of wealth in a cohort of 32,900 British individuals who completed surveys in 2002 and 2008. We conclude that it is the rank of a person’s income or wealth within a social comparison group, rather than income or wealth themselves or their deviations from the mean within a reference group, that is more strongly associated with depressive symptoms. Springer Netherlands 2014-10-28 2015 /pmc/articles/PMC4600095/ /pubmed/26478651 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11205-014-0795-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2014 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.
spellingShingle Article
Osafo Hounkpatin, Hilda
Wood, Alex M.
Brown, Gordon D. A.
Dunn, Graham
Why does Income Relate to Depressive Symptoms? Testing the Income Rank Hypothesis Longitudinally
title Why does Income Relate to Depressive Symptoms? Testing the Income Rank Hypothesis Longitudinally
title_full Why does Income Relate to Depressive Symptoms? Testing the Income Rank Hypothesis Longitudinally
title_fullStr Why does Income Relate to Depressive Symptoms? Testing the Income Rank Hypothesis Longitudinally
title_full_unstemmed Why does Income Relate to Depressive Symptoms? Testing the Income Rank Hypothesis Longitudinally
title_short Why does Income Relate to Depressive Symptoms? Testing the Income Rank Hypothesis Longitudinally
title_sort why does income relate to depressive symptoms? testing the income rank hypothesis longitudinally
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4600095/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26478651
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11205-014-0795-3
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