The association between income, wealth, economic security perception, and health: a longitudinal Australian study

ABSTRACT

The study used data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey to explore three hypotheses: (1) that income and wealth both predict economic security perception, mental health, and physical health; (2) that gradients in health outcomes are better explained by wealth than income; and (3) that economic security perception is better explained by wealth than income. We conducted fixed effects regression analysis. After controlling for other variables in our model, both income and wealth appeared to have positive and significant associations with economic security perception and a range of mental health outcomes, but not physical health. There was also some evidence to support our second hypothesis, that gradients in health outcomes are better explained by wealth than income, however only for mental health. Our third hypothesis was not supported by the data. While both income and wealth were strongly related to economic security perception, it was better explained by income than wealth. We recommend that future studies are designed to evaluate the role of economic security as a mediating variable in the relationship between income, wealth and health, because the implications are substantial.

KEYWORDS:

• Income
• wealth
• economic security
• mental health
• physical health

Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin University. A prior and longer version of this paper is available as a BCEC working paper entitled ‘The impact of differentiated access to income and wealth on health and wellbeing outcomes: a longitudinal Australian study’ on http://bcec.edu.au/publications/the-impact-of-differentiated-access-to-income-and-wealth-on-health-and-wellbeing-outcomes-a-longitudinal-australian-study/. This paper uses unit record data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. The HILDA Paper was initiated and is funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services (DSS) and is managed by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research (Melbourne Institute). The findings and views reported in this paper, however, are those of the authors and should not be attributed to BCEC, DSS or the Melbourne Institute.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Garth E. Kendall http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0000-8198

Rachel Ong http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8557-8802

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin University [H1069002420].