Socio-economic resources and adult mental health in Canada: controlling for time-invariant confounders and investigating causal directionality.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to investigate whether family income and education have a causal effect on psychological distress among Canadian adults.

METHODS

We executed fixed-effects regression analyses using data from the Longitudinal and International Study of Adults (LISA). We investigated whether changes in family income and education from wave 2 (2014) to wave 3 (2016) corresponded with changes in psychological distress during this same time period. We also investigated whether changes in these socio-economic resources from wave 1 (2012) to wave 2 (2014) corresponded with lagged changes in psychological distress from wave 2 (2014) to wave 3 (2016). These models controlled for all time-invariant confounders with time-invariant effects, as well as the time-varying factors age, marital status, household size, and employment status.

RESULTS

Obtaining a postsecondary degree corresponded with lagged decreases in psychological distress among women ages 18 to 32 (b = -1.97; 95% CI = -3.53, -0.42) and men over the age of 32 (b = -1.86; 95% CI = -3.57, -0.15). The effect of postsecondary education was stronger when considering adults who stayed married throughout the three waves (b = -2.29; 95% CI = -4.37, -0.21).

CONCLUSION

Completing postsecondary education may have a lagged causal effect on psychological distress, and the life course timing for when postsecondary completion reduces distress is different for women and men.