Department of Anthropology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, USA.
Department of Quantitative Theory and Methods, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
Am J Hum Biol. 2024 Aug;36(8):e24064. doi: 10.1002/ajhb.24064. Epub 2024 Mar 9.
This paper explores the impact of livelihood strategies and place on mental well-being. Identifying different socioeconomic factors that impact mental well-being across contexts is pressing given the global rise in mental health disorders. Numerous studies in the population and social sciences have emphasized the protective role of material wealth on human health and well-being; however, scholars frequently assess wealth as a one-dimensional variable, which may fail to capture diverse forms of wealth. Acknowledging different forms of wealth may be particularly important in settings where agricultural economies coexist with cash economies. Using data from the 2013 Namibia Demographic Health Survey (n = 13 377), we use a newly developed measure of success in agricultural activities, an agricultural wealth index, or AWI, generated by Hackman et al., (2021). To examine the role of different forms of wealth on mental health symptoms. We find mental well-being, assessed through three survey questions, is lower among urban dwellers and females and shows varied associations with wealth type and sex/gender. In general, success in agricultural activities is associated with better mental well-being, while the association with market success is null or and conditional upon sex/gender and place. This study adds to recent work on the value of using multidimensional measures of wealth and raises important questions about why wealth type and sex/gender differentially impact mental well-being.
本文探讨了生计策略和地点对心理健康的影响。鉴于全球精神健康障碍的增加，确定影响不同背景下心理健康的不同社会经济因素是紧迫的。人口学和社会科学的众多研究强调了物质财富对人类健康和福祉的保护作用；然而，学者们经常将财富评估为单一维度的变量，这可能无法捕捉到不同形式的财富。在农业经济与现金经济并存的环境中，承认不同形式的财富可能尤为重要。本研究使用 2013 年纳米比亚人口健康调查（n=13377）的数据，采用 Hackman 等人（2021）提出的衡量农业活动成功的新指标——农业财富指数（agricultural wealth index，AWI），来检验不同形式的财富对心理健康症状的作用。我们发现，通过三个调查问题评估的心理健康状况在城市居民和女性中较低，并且与财富类型和性别/性别表现出不同的关联。一般来说，农业活动的成功与更好的心理健康相关，而与市场成功的关联是无效的，或者取决于性别/性别和地点。本研究增加了关于使用多维财富衡量标准的价值的最新研究，并提出了关于为什么财富类型和性别/性别会对心理健康产生不同影响的重要问题。
