That there’s a relationship between health, happiness and relative wealth has been understood for a long time; but studies have struggled to isolate the dependent variable. Are healthy people capable of earning more money and therefore better off or are people who are better off less stressed and therefore less prone to illness?
In the paper highlighted today from Germany’s Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) based in Bonn researchers Xi Chen from Yale and the IZA and Tianyu Wang from Beijing’s Jiaotong University make an important contribution to the question.
China, which introduced the ‘New Rural Pension Scheme’ (NRPS) in 2010, provides a good test-bed to tackle the question. The NRPS has 400m members and is thus the largest such program in the world. Benefits are non-means-tested and are to provide income support not a substitute.
What the researchers discovered was ‘..a sizeable reduction in depression susceptibility due to pension income’. This is important because the elderly are particularly vulnerable to mental health issues and, worldwide, have the highest suicide rates of all age groups.
To learn ‘On average, receiving pension reduces the prevalence of depressive symptoms by 40 percent..’ is especially relevant in our ageing world where, by 2050, there will be 2bn elderly to cope with. 80% of those will be living in low or middle-income countries, according to the paper.
How exactly do pensions produce this sentimental lift? The paper suggests the following: more income increases the ability of an older person to live independently, they can buy more health services, higher income reduces psychosocial stress, self esteem is raised and an element of future economic uncertainty is removed.
All this makes intuitive sense but now there’s some science that can help governments elsewhere facing the problem of health care among ageing populations. Money, even just a little it turns out, could be one of the most effective prophylactics against a wide range of age related illness.
There’s an expression about ‘a little money being a great joy’; the paper suggests that wisdom has found a highly practical application.
You can access the paper in full via this link Does Money Relieve Depression?
Happy Sunday.