Heflin Colleen M, Iceland John
Truman School of Public Affairs, University of Missouri,
Department of Sociology and Criminology, The Pennsylvania State University,
Soc Sci Q. 2009 Dec 1;90(5):1051-1071. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-6237.2009.00645.x.
Mental health disorders are of great social, economic, and policy concern. A higher incidence of major depressive disorder has been reported among those living in or near poverty. Our study examines the extent to which the relationship between income and depression is mediated by measures of material hardship.
We use measures of depression at two points in time from the longitudinal Fragile Families Survey to better discern the causal direction of the relationship between income poverty, hardship, and depression. More specifically, we use conditional logistic fixed-effect models that control for time-invariant unmeasured heterogeneity in the sample.
We found a strong relationship between hardships and depression. The most prominent hardships were problems paying bills and phone turned off. We also found that hardship helped mediate much, though not all, of the link between poverty and depression in the conditional fixed effect logistic regression models.
Our policy simulations suggest that public health efforts to reduce depression may be enhanced from efforts that focus on specific forms of material hardship.
心理健康障碍备受社会、经济和政策关注。据报道，生活在贫困之中或附近的人群中，重度抑郁症的发病率较高。我们的研究考察了物质困难指标在多大程度上介导了收入与抑郁症之间的关系。
我们利用纵向脆弱家庭调查中两个时间点的抑郁测量指标，以更好地辨别收入贫困、困难与抑郁症之间关系的因果方向。更具体地说，我们使用条件逻辑固定效应模型来控制样本中随时间不变的不可测量的异质性。
我们发现困难与抑郁症之间存在密切关系。最突出的困难是支付账单问题和电话停机。我们还发现，在条件固定效应逻辑回归模型中，困难在很大程度上（尽管不是全部）介导了贫困与抑郁症之间的联系。
我们的政策模拟表明，针对特定形式物质困难的公共卫生干预措施可能会增强减少抑郁症的努力。
