Golberstein Ezra
Division of Health Policy and Management, University of Minnesota School of Public Health, 420 Delaware St. SE, MMC 729, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA.,
J Ment Health Policy Econ. 2015 Mar;18(1):27-37.
Mental health is a key component of overall wellbeing and mental disorders are relatively common, including among older adults. Yet the causal effect of income on mental health status among older adults is poorly understood.
This paper considers the effects of a major source of transfer income, Social Security retirement benefits, on the mental health of older adults.
The Social Security benefit "Notch" is as a large, permanent, and exogenous shock to Social Security income in retirement. The "Notch" is used to identify the causal effect of Social Security income on mental health among older ages using data from the AHEAD cohort of the Health and Retirement Study.
We find that increases in Social Security income significantly improve mental health status and the likelihood of a psychiatric diagnosis for women, but not for men.
The effects of income on mental health for older women are statistically significant and meaningful in magnitude. While this is one of the only studies to use plausibly exogenous variation in household income to identify the effect of income on mental health, a limitation of this work is that the results only directly pertain to lower-education households.
Public policy proposals that alter retirement benefits for the elderly may have important effects on the mental health of older adults.
心理健康是整体幸福感的关键组成部分，精神障碍相对常见，包括在老年人中。然而，收入对老年人心理健康状况的因果效应却知之甚少。
本文探讨转移性收入的一个主要来源——社会保障退休福利对老年人心理健康的影响。
社会保障福利“缺口”是对退休后社会保障收入的一个巨大、永久性且外生的冲击。利用健康与退休研究的AHEAD队列数据，“缺口”被用于确定社会保障收入对老年人心理健康的因果效应。
我们发现，社会保障收入的增加显著改善了女性的心理健康状况以及被诊断为精神疾病的可能性，但对男性则不然。
收入对老年女性心理健康的影响在统计上具有显著性，且在幅度上有意义。虽然这是少数利用家庭收入中看似外生的变化来确定收入对心理健康影响的研究之一，但这项研究的一个局限性是结果仅直接适用于低教育水平家庭。
改变老年人退休福利的公共政策提案可能会对老年人的心理健康产生重要影响。
