Social Isolation, Healthy Habits, Inequality and Mental Health in the United States

The objective of this work is to deepen the analysis of the socioeconomic determinants of mental health, paying special attention to the impact of inequality, not only in income distribution but also in gender, racial, health and education inequality, social isolation, including new variables to measure loneliness, and healthy habits, on the mental health status. For this purpose, a cross-sectional model for a sample of 2735 counties in the United States is estimated using Ordinary Least Squares in its robust version to solve the detected heteroscedasticity problems. The results obtained show that inequality, social isolation and certain lifestyles, such as smoking or insomnia, are detrimental to mental health, while sexual activity prevents mental distress. On the other hand, poor counties suffer more cases of suicide, with food insecurity being the main problem for mental health. Finally, we found detrimental effects of pollution on mental health.