IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v67y2008i4p529-539.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The association of major depressive episodes with income inequality and the human development index

Author

Listed:
  • Cifuentes, Manuel
  • Sembajwe, Grace
  • Tak, SangWoo
  • Gore, Rebecca
  • Kriebel, David
  • Punnett, Laura

Abstract

The aim of this study was to estimate the association between country income distribution and human development with the 12-month occurrence of major depressive episodes across countries. A total of 251,158 people surveyed by the World Health Organization from 2002 to 2003 from 65 countries were included in the study. The survey contained items for identifying major depressive episodes (MDE) in the previous 12 months, attained education (used as an indicator of individual socioeconomic status) and other demographic information. Income inequality was measured with the Gini index, a national-level indicator; the United Nations human development index (HDI) measured overall country development. Country-level and multilevel linear regression models were utilized to study the associations. We found that moderately developed countries had the lowest adjusted prevalence of MDE followed by high and low developed countries. The Gini index was positively associated with major depressive episodes, but only among high HDI countries. After adjusting for age, gender, marital status, education and HDI, the multilevel prevalence ratio indicated a 4% increase in risk of MDE for a person living in a country associated with a 1% increment in income equality. This finding means, for example, that comparing two highly developed countries, one with low income inequality (Gini = 0.25) with another with high income inequality (Gini = 0.39), one would expect to see an increase in the prevalence of MDE from 4.0% to 6.2%. These findings raise important questions about the role of income inequality on social forces that can lead to depression.

Suggested Citation

  • Cifuentes, Manuel & Sembajwe, Grace & Tak, SangWoo & Gore, Rebecca & Kriebel, David & Punnett, Laura, 2008. "The association of major depressive episodes with income inequality and the human development index," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(4), pages 529-539, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:67:y:2008:i:4:p:529-539
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(08)00209-8
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. McLeod, C.B. & Lavis, J.N. & Mustard, C.A. & Stoddart, G.L., 2003. "Income Inequality, Household Income, and Health Status in Canada: A Prospective Cohort Study," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 93(8), pages 1287-1293.
    2. Wilkinson, Richard G & Pickett, Kate E., 2006. "Income inequality and population health: A review and explanation of the evidence," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(7), pages 1768-1784, April.
    3. Gerdtham, Ulf-G. & Ruhm, Christopher J., 2006. "Deaths rise in good economic times: Evidence from the OECD," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 298-316, December.
    4. World Bank, 2006. "World Development Indicators 2006," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 8151.
    5. Ruhm, Christopher J., 2003. "Good times make you sick," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 637-658, July.
    6. Patel, Vikram & Araya, Ricardo & de Lima, Mauricio & Ludermir, Ana & Todd, Charles, 1999. "Women, poverty and common mental disorders in four restructuring societies," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 49(11), pages 1461-1471, December.
    7. Judge, Ken & Mulligan, Jo-Ann & Benzeval, Michaela, 0. "Income inequality and population health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 46(4-5), pages 567-579, February.
    8. Fone, David & Dunstan, Frank & Williams, Gareth & Lloyd, Keith & Palmer, Stephen, 2007. "Places, people and mental health: A multilevel analysis of economic inactivity," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(3), pages 633-645, February.
    9. Ecob, Russell & Davey Smith, George, 1999. "Income and health: what is the nature of the relationship?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 48(5), pages 693-705, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Qiu, Qihua & Sung, Jaesang & Davis, Will & Tchernis, Rusty, 2018. "Using spatial factor analysis to measure human development," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 130-149.
    2. Ambugo, Eliva A., 2014. "Cross-country variation in the sociodemographic factors associated with major depressive episode in Norway, the United Kingdom, Ghana, and Kenya," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 154-160.
    3. Hilda Osafo Hounkpatin & Alex Wood & Gordon Brown & Graham Dunn, 2015. "Why does Income Relate to Depressive Symptoms? Testing the Income Rank Hypothesis Longitudinally," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 124(2), pages 637-655, November.
    4. Brendon Stubbs & Kamran Siddiqi & Helen Elsey & Najma Siddiqi & Ruimin Ma & Eugenia Romano & Sameen Siddiqi & Ai Koyanagi, 2021. "Tuberculosis and Non-Communicable Disease Multimorbidity: An Analysis of the World Health Survey in 48 Low- and Middle-Income Countries," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(5), pages 1-15, March.
    5. Rosineide Fernando da Paz & Jorge Luis Bazán & Luis Aparecido Milan, 2017. "Bayesian estimation for a mixture of simplex distributions with an unknown number of components: HDI analysis in Brazil," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(9), pages 1630-1643, July.
    6. Acheampong, Alex O. & Erdiaw-Kwasie, Michael Odei & Abunyewah, Matthew, 2021. "Does energy accessibility improve human development? Evidence from energy-poor regions," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    7. Lund, Crick & Breen, Alison & Flisher, Alan J. & Kakuma, Ritsuko & Corrigall, Joanne & Joska, John A. & Swartz, Leslie & Patel, Vikram, 2010. "Poverty and common mental disorders in low and middle income countries: A systematic review," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 517-528, August.
    8. Hackman, Joseph & Maupin, Jonathan & Brewis, Alexandra A., 2016. "Weight-related stigma is a significant psychosocial stressor in developing countries: Evidence from Guatemala," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 55-60.
    9. Dilek Başar & Selcen Öztürk, 2020. "Assessing Horizontal Equity in the Utilization of Mental Healthcare Services in Turkey: A Gender Perspective," Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 299-309, April.
    10. Rukhsana Kalim & Noman Arshed & Waqas Ahmad, 2021. "Aligning the Real Sector Production with Human Development: Exploring Role of Multi-sector Collaboration," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 157(3), pages 955-976, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kathleen Cleeren & Lien Lamey & Jan‐Hinrich Meyer & Ko De Ruyter, 2016. "How Business Cycles Affect the Healthcare Sector: A Cross‐country Investigation," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(7), pages 787-800, July.
    2. Ainhoa Aparicio, 2014. "Newborn Health and the Business Cycle," CINCH Working Paper Series 1402, Universitaet Duisburg-Essen, Competent in Competition and Health.
    3. Wang, Huixia & Wang, Chenggang & Halliday, Timothy J., 2018. "Health and health inequality during the great recession: Evidence from the PSID," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 17-30.
    4. Clémentine Garrouste & Mathilde Godard, 2016. "The lasting health impact of leaving school in a bad economy : Britons in the 1970s recession," Post-Print hal-01408637, HAL.
    5. Markowitz, Sara & Nesson, Erik & Robinson, Joshua J., 2019. "The effects of employment on influenza rates," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 286-295.
    6. Colombo, Emilio & Rotondi, Valentina & Stanca, Luca, 2018. "Macroeconomic conditions and health: Inspecting the transmission mechanism," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 29-37.
    7. Birgisdóttir, Kristín Helga & Hauksdóttir, Arna & Ruhm, Christopher & Valdimarsdóttir, Unnur Anna & Ásgeirsdóttir, Tinna Laufey, 2020. "The effect of the economic collapse in Iceland on the probability of cardiovascular events," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 37(C).
    8. Federico Belotti & Joanna Kopinska & Alessandro Palma & Andrea Piano Mortari, 2022. "Health status and the Great Recession. Evidence from electronic health records," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(8), pages 1770-1799, August.
    9. Sargent-Cox, Kerry & Butterworth, Peter & Anstey, Kaarin J., 2011. "The global financial crisis and psychological health in a sample of Australian older adults: A longitudinal study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(7), pages 1105-1112.
    10. Reichmuth, Wolfgang H. & Sarferaz, Samad, 2008. "The influence of the business cycle on mortality," SFB 649 Discussion Papers 2008-059, Humboldt University Berlin, Collaborative Research Center 649: Economic Risk.
    11. Chenggang Wang & Huixia Wang & Timothy J. Halliday, 2017. "Health and Health Inequality during the Great Recession: Evidence from the PSID," Working Papers 201703, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    12. Cristina Bellés‐Obrero & Sergi Jiménez‐Martín & Judit Vall‐Castello, 2016. "Bad Times, Slimmer Children?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(S2), pages 93-112, November.
    13. Wen-Yi Chen, 2016. "Health progress and economic growth in the USA: the continuous wavelet analysis," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 50(3), pages 831-855, May.
    14. Seemab Gillani & Muhammad Nouman Shafiq & Tusawar Iftikhar Ahmad, 2019. "Military Expenditures and Health Outcomes: A Global Perspective," iRASD Journal of Energy and Environment, International Research Association for Sustainable Development (iRASD), vol. 1(1), pages 1-20, June.
    15. Jones, Andrew M. & Wildman, John, 2008. "Health, income and relative deprivation: Evidence from the BHPS," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 308-324, March.
    16. Timothy Halliday, 2006. "Income Risk and Health," Working Papers 200612, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    17. Erdal Tekin & Chandler McClellan & Karen Jean Minyard, 2013. "Health and Health Behaviors during the Worst of Times," NBER Working Papers 19234, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Timothy Halliday, 2006. "The Impact of Aggregate and Idiosyncratic Income Shocks on Health Outcomes: Evidence from the PSID," Working Papers 200606, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    19. Petri Böckerman & Edvard Johansson & Satu Helakorpi & Ritva Prättälä & Erkki Vartiainen & Antti Uutela, 2007. "Does a slump really make you thinner? Finnish micro‐level evidence 1978–2002," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(1), pages 103-107, January.
    20. Theodossiou, I. & Zangelidis, A., 2009. "The social gradient in health: The effect of absolute income and subjective social status assessment on the individual's health in Europe," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 229-237, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:67:y:2008:i:4:p:529-539. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.