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

© 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. 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 he...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Kendall, Garth, Nguyen, Ha, Ong, Rachel
Format: Journal Article
Published: The Australian Sociological Association 2018
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/73214
_version_ 1848762955512938496
author Kendall, Garth
Nguyen, Ha
Ong, Rachel
author_facet Kendall, Garth
Nguyen, Ha
Ong, Rachel
author_sort Kendall, Garth
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description © 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. 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.
first_indexed 2025-11-14T10:55:47Z
format Journal Article
id curtin-20.500.11937-73214
institution Curtin University Malaysia
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T10:55:47Z
publishDate 2018
publisher The Australian Sociological Association
recordtype eprints
repository_type Digital Repository
spelling curtin-20.500.11937-732142018-12-13T09:35:42Z The association between income, wealth, economic security perception, and health: a longitudinal Australian study Kendall, Garth Nguyen, Ha Ong, Rachel © 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. 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. 2018 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/73214 10.1080/14461242.2018.1530574 The Australian Sociological Association restricted
spellingShingle Kendall, Garth
Nguyen, Ha
Ong, Rachel
The association between income, wealth, economic security perception, and health: a longitudinal Australian study
title The association between income, wealth, economic security perception, and health: a longitudinal Australian study
title_full The association between income, wealth, economic security perception, and health: a longitudinal Australian study
title_fullStr The association between income, wealth, economic security perception, and health: a longitudinal Australian study
title_full_unstemmed The association between income, wealth, economic security perception, and health: a longitudinal Australian study
title_short The association between income, wealth, economic security perception, and health: a longitudinal Australian study
title_sort association between income, wealth, economic security perception, and health: a longitudinal australian study
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/73214