Income inequality affects the psychological health of only the people facing scarcity
Title | Income inequality affects the psychological health of only the people facing scarcity |
Publication Type | Journal Article |
Year of Publication | 2018 |
Authors | Sommet, N, Morselli, D, Spini, D |
Journal | Psychological Science |
Volume | 29 |
Number | 12 |
Pagination | 1911–1921 |
ISSN | 0956-7976, 1467-9280 |
Keywords | www |
Abstract | Following the status-anxiety hypothesis, the psychological consequences of income inequality should be particularly severe for economically vulnerable individuals. Oddly, however, income inequality is often found to affect vulnerable low-income and advantaged high-income groups equally. We argue that economic vulnerability is better captured by a financial-scarcity measure and hypothesize that income inequality primarily impairs the psychological health of people facing scarcity. First, repeated cross-sectional international data (from the World Values Survey: 146,034 participants; 105 country waves) revealed that the within-country effect of national income inequality on feelings of unhappiness was limited to individuals facing scarcity (≈25% of the World Values Survey population). Second, longitudinal national data (Swiss Household Panel: 14,790 participants; 15,595 municipality years) revealed that the within-life-course effect of local income inequality on psychological health problems was also limited to these individuals ( |
URL | http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797618798620 |
DOI | 10.1177/0956797618798620 |