Department of Sociology, University of Alabama-Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294-1152, USA.
J Aging Health. 2012 Jun;24(4):673-95. doi: 10.1177/0898264311431304. Epub 2012 Feb 13.
This study examines the impact of indebtedness on depressive symptomatology, anxiety, and anger.
We use data from a two-wave panel study of adults in Miami-Dade County. The analytic sample consists of 1,463 mostly older respondents with valid data on all study measures, including education, income, occupational status, wealth, and debt.
We find that indebtedness is common and is associated with more symptoms of depression, anxiety, and anger. It is weakly associated with other aspects of socioeconomic status (SES), and thus not redundant with them. In fact, in this sample, debtor status is more consistently associated with mental health than any other single traditional indicator of SES, its effect does not vary across income or other aspects of SES, and fears of never paying off debt account for its negative impact on mental health.
These findings affirm health scholars' calls for more complete measures of SES.
本研究考察了负债对抑郁症状、焦虑和愤怒的影响。
我们使用了迈阿密戴德县两波成人面板研究的数据。分析样本由 1463 名主要为年长的受访者组成，他们在所有研究措施上都有有效数据，包括教育、收入、职业地位、财富和债务。
我们发现负债很常见，与更多的抑郁、焦虑和愤怒症状有关。它与社会经济地位（SES）的其他方面有微弱的关联，因此与它们并不重复。事实上，在这个样本中，债务人的地位与心理健康的关联比任何其他单一的传统 SES 指标都更为一致，其影响不因收入或 SES 的其他方面而有所不同，而且对永远无法偿还债务的担忧解释了其对心理健康的负面影响。
这些发现肯定了健康学者呼吁更全面的 SES 衡量标准。
