ArticleHealth & place2016
Income inequality and depressive symptoms in South Africa: A longitudinal analysis of the National Income Dynamics Study.
Article in Health & place, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The trial behind it
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 53 citations in OpenAlex.
- The association between income inequality and adult mental health at the subnational level-a systematic review.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2022Pooled it
- Predictors of Treatment Adherence and Virological Failure Among People Living with HIV Receiving Antiretroviral Therapy in a South African Rural Community: A Sub-study of the ITREMA Randomised Clinical Trial.AIDS and behavior · 2023Trial
- Development and validation of a nomogram for predicting the risk of mental health problems of factory workers and miners.BMJ open · 2022Trial
- Intergenerational hypertension transmission before and after South Africa's democratic transition.SSM - population health · 2026Article
- Social Determinants of Health: Healthcare managers' COVID-19 experiences of poor governance, poverty and social media on health interventions.Public health in practice (Oxford, England) · 2023Article
- Article
- Psychological legacies of intergenerational trauma under South African apartheid: Prenatal stress predicts greater vulnerability to the psychological impacts of future stress exposure during late adolescence and early adulthood in Soweto, South Africa.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2023Article
- Perceptions and attitudes of black men in a rural district of South Africa towards depression and its treatment.South African family practice : official journal of the South African Academy of Family Practice/Primary Care · 2022Article
- The effects of U.S. county and state income inequality on self-reported happiness and health are equivalent to zero.Quality of life research : an international journal of quality of life aspects of treatment, care and rehabilitation · 2022Article
- Article
- Comprehensive metrological and content analysis of the income inequality research in health field: A bibliometric analysis.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
- Income inequality and non-communicable disease mortality and morbidity in Brazil States: a longitudinal analysis 2002-2017.Lancet regional health. Americas · 2021Article
- Dimensionality and differential item endorsement of depressive symptoms among aging Black populations in South Africa: Findings from the HAALSI study.Journal of affective disorders · 2020Article
- Are There Heterogeneous Impacts of National Income on Mental Health?International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Article
- The Need for Universal Screening for Postnatal Depression in South Africa: Confirmation from a Sub-District in Pretoria, South Africa.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Article
- State-Level Income Inequality and County-Level Social Capital in Relation to Individual-Level Depression in Middle-Aged Adults: A Lagged Multilevel Study.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Article
- Mental morbidity and its associations with socio-behavioural factors and chronic conditions in rural middle- and older-aged adults in South Africa.Journal of psychology in Africa (south of the Sahara, the Caribbean, and Afro-Latin America) · 2020Article
- Subjective social status and inequalities in depressive symptoms: a gender-specific decomposition analysis for South Africa.International journal for equity in health · 2019Article
- Income inequality and cardiovascular disease risk factors in a highly unequal country: a fixed-effects analysis from South Africa.International journal for equity in health · 2018Article
- Income inequality and depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis of the association and a scoping review of mechanisms.World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Research suggests that income inequality may detrimentally affect mental health. We examined the relationship between district-level income inequality and depressive symptoms among individuals in South Africa-one of the most unequal countries in the world-using longitudinal data from Wave 1 (2008) and Wave 3 (2012) of the National Income Dynamics Study. Depressive symptoms were measured using the Center for Epidemiological Studies of Depression Short Form while district Gini coefficients were estimated from census and survey sources. Age, African population group, being single, being female, and having lower household income were independently associated with higher depressive symptoms. However, in longitudinal, fixed-effects regression models controlling for several factors, district-level Gini coefficients were not significantly associated with depressive symptoms scores. Our results do not support the hypothesis of a causal link between income inequality and depressive symptoms in the short-run. Possible explanations include the high underlying levels of inequality in all districts, or potential lags in the effect of inequality on depression.
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Registered trials
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