Centre LIVES, University of Lausanne, Bâtiment Géopolis, Bureau #5785, Quartier UNIL-Mouline, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Department of Psychology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA.
Qual Life Res. 2022 Jul;31(7):1999-2009. doi: 10.1007/s11136-022-03137-8. Epub 2022 Apr 28.
A popular idea in the social sciences is that contexts with high income inequality undermine people's well-being and health. However, existing studies documenting this phenomenon typically compare a small number of higher-level units (countries/regions). Here, we use local income inequality indicators and temporal designs to provide the most highly powered test to date of the associations between income inequality and self-reported happiness and health in the USA METHOD: We combined county-level income inequality data (county-level Gini coefficients) with the responses from the General Social Survey (GSS) Cross-sectional dataset (13,000 + participants from ≈1000 county-waves) and Panels (3 × 3000 + participants from 3 × ≈500 county-waves); we used the GSS happiness ("not too happy," "pretty happy," or "very happy") and health ("poor," "fair," "good," or "excellent") variables.
Multilevel-ordered logistic models and equivalence tests revealed that the within-county effects of income inequality on self-reported happiness and health were systematically equivalent to zero. Additional analyses revealed that the within-state effects were identical, that using alternative measures of state income inequality led to the same conclusions, and that lagged effects (between + 1 and + 12 years) were never significant and always equivalent to zero.
The present work suggests that-at least in the USA-income inequality is likely neither associated with self-reported happiness nor with self-reported health.
社会科学中的一个流行观点认为，高收入不平等的环境会损害人们的幸福感和健康。然而，现有的研究记录这一现象通常是比较少数的高级别单位（国家/地区）。在这里，我们使用地方收入不平等指标和时间设计，提供迄今为止对美国收入不平等与自我报告的幸福感和健康之间关联的最有力检验。
我们将县一级的收入不平等数据（县一级基尼系数）与综合社会调查（GSS）的横断面数据集（来自约 1000 个县波的 13000 多名参与者）和面板（来自 3 个波的 3000 多名参与者）的回答相结合；我们使用 GSS 的幸福感（“不太幸福”、“相当幸福”或“非常幸福”）和健康（“差”、“一般”、“好”或“优秀”）变量。
多层次有序逻辑模型和等效性检验表明，收入不平等对自我报告的幸福感和健康的县内影响系统地等于零。进一步的分析表明，州内的影响是相同的，使用替代的州收入不平等衡量标准得出了相同的结论，并且滞后效应（在+1 到+12 年之间）从未显著且始终等于零。
本研究表明，至少在美国，收入不平等与自我报告的幸福感或自我报告的健康状况可能没有关联。
