Economic Inequality Does Not Equate To Poor Well-Being or Mental Health, Massive Meta-Analysis Finds (nature.com)
- Reference: 0180503873
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/01/02/1954229/economic-inequality-does-not-equate-to-poor-well-being-or-mental-health-massive-meta-analysis-finds
- Source link: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03833-8
They also replicated their findings using Gallup World Poll data spanning 2005 to 2021, which surveyed more than two million respondents from more than 150 countries. People living in more economically unequal places did not, on average, report lower life satisfaction or happiness than those in more equal places. The average effect across studies was not statistically significant and was practically equivalent to zero. Studies that did find links between inequality and poorer mental health turned out to reflect publication bias, where small, noisy studies reporting larger effects were over-represented in the literature. The study adds:
> Further analyses showed that the near-zero averages conceal more-complex patterns. Greater income inequality was associated with lower well-being in high-inflation contexts and, surprisingly, higher well-being in low-inflation contexts. Greater inequality was also associated with poorer mental health in studies in which the average income was lower. We conclude that inequality is a catalyst that amplifies other determinants of well-being and mental health (such as inflation and poverty) but on its own is not a root cause of negative effects on well-being and mental health.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03833-8
Poverty doesn't negatively affect wellbeing? (Score:3)
Does the study imply that poverty doesn't negatively affect wellbeing?
I'm assuming that there are more poor people in an inequal society, compared to an equal one.
Re:Poverty doesn't negatively affect wellbeing? (Score:4, Informative)
Basically it is an exercise in statistical bullshit.
The "researchers":
1. Collected some articles that report something or other,
2. Quote an absurd number of eleventy million studied subjects, when they only deal with articles and never with anything else,
3. In this manner they try to build an image of "huge" statistical base
4. Then they "borrow" some statistical methods from the very close and relevant field of epidemiology to "adjust" what they perceive as "differences" between the reported outcomes of the articles they study and
5. finally they compare the "data", thusly massaged, to a
6. "random model" based on some recent "theories" about how poverty and mental health and self-assessed "well being" are unrelated and
7. say, roughly, hey, the "adjusted" data we made up show no difference from our own random model, therefore our predefined conclusion, based on some theories that this is so [1] are valid.
But it makes a beautiful narrative totally in line with the new politics, and therefore is likely to get a lot of traction, as we see in comment #1 already.
1. These are the "theoretical basis" for the model and the adjustments
Hirschman, A. O. & Rothschild, M. The changing tolerance for income inequality in the
course of economic development. Q. J. Econ. 87, 544–566 (1973).
Cheung, F. Can income inequality be associated with positive outcomes? Hope mediates
the positive inequality–happiness link in rural China. Soc. Psychol. Pers. Sci. 7, 320–330
(2016).
Sommet, N. & Elliot, A. J. A competitiveness-based theoretical framework to study the
psychology of income inequality. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 32, 318–327 (2023).
Agree on the stats (Score:3)
Agree with your opinion on the statistics. It would greatly help if the many sub-optimal papers get retracted also. Those include
- Self reported surveys
- A too small (50?) sample size
- Papers with a biased starting sample (surveying only middle aged white women) and generalizing to the entire population including men
- Ones with survey questions which seek to confirm an already held conclusion (e.g., using "Is it OK to speed if you are driving a critically sick person to the hospital?" and reporting it as
Re: (Score:2)
I think the keyword here is "equate", which probably means "very strongly correlated". If it is merely strongly correlated, "does not equate" would already be true. Essentially a nice example for a lie by misdirection.
Third-world and mental health (Score:3)
It begs the question, are those in poverty in other countries more likely to have both parents, more likely to have a strong community and extended family and less likely to overdo social media consumption?
Re: Poverty doesn't negatively affect wellbeing? (Score:2)
> I'm assuming that there are more poor people in an inequal society, compared to an equal one.
You know what they say about assumptions. Behind the iron curtain they didn't have homelessness, but they were all equally waiting in bread lines.
The problem is poverty, then. (Score:3)
Note that I couldn't get access to the paper, except for [1]the abstract [nature.com].
> Greater inequality was also associated with poorer mental health in studies in which the average income was lower.
This is the unsurprising fact. It implies that it's the closeness to poverty that has a negative impact on well-being and mental health.
While inequality is a cause of that globally, there are plenty of parts of the first world that include the meaninglessly rich alongside the adequately resourced.
On the other hand with less inequality globally, there'd be less poverty.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09797-z
Re: The problem is poverty, then. (Score:1)
"While inequality is a cause of that globally, there are plenty of parts of the first world that include the meaninglessly rich alongside the adequately resourced."
Why isn't universal basic income the obvious solution?
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly.
Re: (Score:2)
> On the other hand with less inequality globally, there'd be less poverty.
As American taxpayers are finding out rather quickly with regards to Somalian “daycare”, there is no shortage of money to correct the problem of poverty. There is a massive fucking problem with what happens to that money.
Fix the problem of anti-corruption enforcement. Make THAT the focus of equality with common laws and proper enforcement, and the problem of poverty evaporates.
Poverty was solved long ago. Corruption wasn’t.
Re: (Score:2)
> Outside of a hit youtube piece of some MAGAt that has already been debunked and massive repeats thereof, what actual evidence is there of "Somalian fraud"?
I’d say it’s summed up quite nicely in your shitty SIGN language, where you abuse Shame, Insult, Guilt, all for a Need to be right instead of providing an actual retort.
But perhaps we should ask the Quality Learing Center how to spell “learning” first. I mean before we dig into the IRS paperwork that hopefully won’t also get stolen through a robbery by cutting drywall from the inside of your daycare office while claiming to be a victim of daycare records theft. A crime that h
Well-being is a choice? (Score:1)
I feel that well-being can be a complicated and a many faceted thing and at the same time, well-being can also be a personal choice, that can happen at any time, anywhere, any place. And then gone in an instant.
Thank goodness, as this study apparently shows, well-being is not something you can buy!
Inequality is cool says study backed by rich (Score:1)
Confirming that people just don't know how bad they have it. Meanwhile, malnutrition, disease, and lack of access to clean resources and healthcare is killing them while the fat cats buy their 30th empty villa.
"minimum thresold for comfort" (Score:2)
I imagine that a certain point, most people would have "enough money to not worry about the certain immediate doom".
However i bet there's a few billion people that are not even in that.
Also given certain lists being that were released and badly censored etc, you probably should have a study on the mental health of people with too much money.
Re: (Score:2)
> Also given certain lists being that were released and badly censored etc, you probably should have a study on the mental health of people with too much money.
Most successful CEOs exhibit psychopathic traits. We the defenders and definers of a “modern” society have deemed those traits as a good thing.
What is the ACTUAL fucking problem here? The psychopath, or the ones putting psychopaths on a fucking pedestal to worship in MBA class?
Studies don’t happen because the root cause is often found to be uncomfortably obvious.
reverse the cause and effect (Score:2)
Mental health problems are a good predictor of poverty. In the USA, if you don't have a wealthy family to take care of you, schizophrenia will pretty certainly put you out on the street or in another very bad economic situation.
Re: (Score:2)
That is a third-world situation though.
Culture and mind set (Score:3)
As with happiness, I suspect that well being is partly a mind set.
i.e. Two people with exactly the same level of wealth, with exactly the same types of social relationships, etc., can have different levels of well being.
One example is expectations. If you expect to be in a better situation than you are, then you will feel dissatisfied. If, on the other hand, you feel grateful for your current situation, then you are more likely to feel satisfied.
This has bearing on how society chooses to look on various occupations. If society chooses to "respect" a wealthy few, and look down on blue collar work, then this will result in a greater number of people dissatisfied with their lot. If society gives genuine respect to manual labourers that diligently and responsibly carry out their work, then the opportunities for people to be contented with their role in society will be greater.
What is their definition of inequality? (Score:3)
What matters to me and my family is the nominal amount we can consume. If my neighbor has 500 million in assets and he manages them well then that is good for me. If I choose to rent then I want there to be lots of profitable landlords competing for my rental income. I want there to be others that are earning lots of money so they can be taxed to pay for socialist things like healthcare. Wealth is just who owns the means of production. I want there to be lots of wealth so my labor is more productive. I don't want to be working and worrying 100 hours a week about my business and my employees and I probably wouldn't be good at it. I'm never going to risk my entire savings on a way to enable strangers on the internet to make transactions, I'm never going to invest everything on making electric cars sexy or building reusable rockets. It takes a certain personality (likely someone who most of us would call an asshole) to make risks like that.
I want to live in a society where I can consume goods, housing, leisure and healthcare and not constantly worry about the future.
I don't want a society were we demonize the wealthy so they leave or don't reinvest in what they did well, where we demonize landlords to the point no one invests in rental housing and the young lose all geographic mobility to find a career. I also don't want a society where we create artificial housing wealth by restricting home construction.
At the end of the day I would rather be a poor person in society where there is a huge amount of consumption of all the things I want than be an asset or earning rich person in a society that has scarcity of the things I want to consume.
What, physical wealth does not make you happy? (Score:2)
Who would have thought?
Re: (Score:1)
Rich people?
Reason Magazines take on inequality (Score:2)
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Note: These guys are heavily libertarian.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ufXVXqXvYo
Paywalled, but any "religion" variables involved? (Score:1)
Just wondering.
\o/ (Score:1)
.. concluded a study initiated and paid for by super-rich people and carried out by the wealthy.
Re: Bad news for grifters and the UN (Score:2)
Unlikely. Every time you guys try to back up your claims about income inequality being somehow bad, the data you use either ends up being cherry picked or, alternatively, just highly scattered (i.e. inconclusive) data points, and yet you still grasp at patterns that aren't even there.
The only thing it ever hurt was your ego.
Re: Bad news for grifters and the UN (Score:1)
Everyone with wealth give everything you have to someone without wealth then come back and tell us how happy you still are.
Re: Bad news for grifters and the UN (Score:2)
If it doesn't matter then I would think there would be no barrier to that happening.
Re: (Score:2)
> Noting that it is good to hear that individual happiness and well being are not correlated to how much money you have.
That might be a handy campaign message.
Re: (Score:2)
> Noting that it is good to hear that individual happiness and well being are not correlated to how much money you have.
And in actual reality, not even the misleading title says that.
Re: Bad news for grifters and the UN (Score:1)
"Noting that it is good to hear that individual happiness and well being are not correlated to how much money you have"
Isn't this just the Easterlin paradox? Why do we pursue GDP when it doesn't even make us happier?
Re: (Score:3)
It's not a liberal or conservative take here, the UN, World Bank and the usual NGOs have pushed for Europe (who doesn't approve of the president and follows socialist policies) and the USA to pay money for past events, past allegations, or unproven grievances claimed by a third-world country.
What's common with this first-world to third-world wealth transfer, the UN and NGOs get their cut of the money, keep their influence and media promotions, and get to employ lots of people.
Countering the group of people
Re: Bad news for grifters and the UN (Score:2)
> Europe (who doesn't approve of the president and follows socialist policies
Europe isn't socialist.
Re: (Score:3)
> Noting that it is good to hear that individual happiness and well being are not correlated to how much money you have.
That's not what the study said. The study said that happiness is not correlated to inequality. Inequality is different than how much money you have.
If you're going to criticize a study, at least think first.