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Low parental income in childhood linked to increased risk of mental disorders
- tchalla 6y ago> In this cohort study of over a million Danish persons, we found that lower parental income, longer time spent growing up in financially poorer conditions and downward family income mobility during childhood were associated with higher risk for developing a secondary care-diagnosed mental disorder as a young adult. The greatest hazard ratios observed were for substance misuse disorders and for personality disorders, but similar patterns were seen across a broad range of mental disorder diagnostic categories. Income inequality has and continues to cause detriment for societies.
- iamkroot 6y agoIs the problem inequality or that the income is below a threshold that would guarantee safety and pray of mind?
- learnstats2 6y agoAren't those the same? If you raised everyone's income above a minimum threshold, that would reduce income inequality by almost any measure. Gini coefficient (the most commonly used inequality measure) effectively uses logarithms in its calculations: so raising incomes away from zero is the most effective way of reducing inequality by this metric (and most other metrics, and, I think, in most people's minds). [Edit: are y'all down-voting because I said something technically wrong, or because you disagree in your mind? I'd like to know.]
- darkerside 6y agoWhat if you did it in a way that makes Bezos even richer? What if you could increase low end incomes while simultaneously worsening inequality? Should we do it? My vote is, of course. But I'm genuinely curious to hear the counter argument.
- learnstats2 6y agoThe fact that Bezos can get incredibly richer this year, while other people struggle harder is symptomatic of a system that allows inequality - it's not that Bezos getting richer in itself causes inequality. Bezos's wealth is already effectively unbounded. He has the same wealth as ~50% of the population of United States altogether. That won't immediately change if you uplift poor people's income (since income is not wealth). Why is it important to consider his right to get even richer?
- WalterBright 6y ago> Why is it important to consider his right to get even richer? Because it has a correlation with making a lot of other peoples' lives better. For example, I needed to do some repairs two days ago, and ordered the parts necessary from Amazon, and received the parts yesterday. I didn't have to spend 2 hours driving somewhere to get those parts. That extra 2 hours is a benefit to my life. Amazon, in aggregate, has saved me a great deal of time. Another benefit Amazon provides is selection - I can find much more exactly what I want, rather than accepting whatever the store has.
- learnstats2 6y agoThis example is a specific benefit, but not one that Amazon has provided. It's a benefit that online shopping has provided, which Amazon has monopolized, partly via suppressing competition and exploiting labour (which society has to pay for in other ways).
- WalterBright 6y agoAmazon utterly revolutionized online shopping, a benefit Amazon provided. There's simply no way it could have otherwise grown to the biggest company in the world from a garage in Bellevue. 25 years later it's easy to assume that online shopping was always like it is today. No way. Nobody even conceived of what it has become. I remember, for example, when ordering by mail meant "allow 3 to 6 weeks for delivery". I'm still astonished by next day delivery - which Amazon created and made ordinary.
- unishark 6y agoOr that bad parents also are bad employees and earn less money.
- nerdponx 6y agoAre you suggesting that being "bad" is systematically causal for low income? The standard of evidence would be quite high for such a claim.
- roel_v 6y agoWhat? Why? How is it not self evident that people with poor decision making skills will, on average, have low incomes?
- justatdotin 6y agobecause some people earning very high incomes do so by indulging poor decision making.
- z3t4 6y agoIts not about the choises - its about the available options to choose from.
- mmmmmk 6y agoBecause that ignores the complexities of the labor market, the economy and life
- hairofadog 6y agoAnecdotally, I see many people with poor decision-making skills prosper because they were born into wealth, and conversely many who make the best decisions available to them yet fail to thrive because of situational challenges (or, for example, the decision to become a schoolteacher in the US). Bad decisions may (may) lead you to financial ruin, but financial ruin is not an indicator of bad decisions.
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- tchalla 6y agoIn my view, the problem is societal outcomes like the one we see in the linked article. The factor that compounds the problem is income equality. Your question is interesting but I'd like to rephrase it a bit. What should the minimum income threshold be that puts reasonable guarantees on desired societal outcomes?
- nicoburns 6y agoThis should probably be expressed as a proportion of total economic output rather than a dollar amount. Because ultimately money represents a share of societies economic output.
- WalterBright 6y ago> the problem is income equality Why should relative levels of income be determinative rather than absolute levels of income?
- nicoburns 6y agoDisproportionately large incomes also cause significant problems to capitalist societies, because our market system is predicated on the idea that we indicate our preferences by spending our money on the things we want. That system breaks down when a significant proportion of the wealth is controlled by only a few people, leading to many of the same problems you get in planned economies that have a similar concentration of power.
- kebman 6y agoWhat you're talking about reminds me of the horseshoe model of politics. I've always found it fascinating how corporatism is so similar to aspects of communism, or how communist bureaus in some ways are very similar to corporations with huge market shares (de facto monopolies, with only token competition being allowed). A corporation of course works under the system of capitalism, which is often said to be the antithesis of communism. Yet the outcome of either model goven monopolist tendencies and largesse is strangely similar.
- tartoran 6y agoHaving experienced both I confirm that there are a whole lot of similarities between the two
- simoom22 6y agoIn political economy literature, the Soviet Union is often called a "state capitalist" type of economy rather than communist. It functioned as a giant corporation in global capitalism. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism
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- bjornsing 6y agoYou switched from spending money to wealth. That exposed a weakness in the argument: it’s only when wealth is spent that the problem arises (if it exists at all).
- kwhitefoot 6y agoMost likely inequality has an effect in addition to any problems caused by the absolute level of income. Remember that this study was done in Denmark which has a functioning welfare state (no doubt imperfect of course), so not very many of the people in question would suffer severe physical privation. It would be interesting to see a similar study in a country where being in the bottom quintile also meant being absolutely poor.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- zozbot234 6y agoIs it a real effect, or a mere correlation between relative low income and other kinds of social marginalization and/or lack of social capital? It's not always easy to measure the latter at an individual or household level (hence why relative SES is often used as a correlate), but there's plenty of research highlighting the importance of social capital provision at a broader community scale.
- dalbasal 6y ago>> Is the problem inequality or that the income is below... I'm not sure this is a valid (in a Popperian sense) QUESTION. Income is interrelated to a motherload of other population factors that interact in complex ways. Things can be both cause and effect. You live in a cheap neighborhood because you're broke. Maybe this low income neighborhood or has worse jobs or worse schools. Maybe crime is high. Stress. Mental health. Relationship consequences. Financial consequences Etc. These things are complex in practice and can span communities/societies. I don't think we can understand these things fully or mechanically. There's plenty of evidence, theory, and common sense that such problems stack. No theory or measurement is definitive, IMO. Weather you theorize about the world or deal in data, you're probably not distinguishing between income and income inequality well. They're too tightly interlinked in practice. That said, I doubt that middle-quintile income groups in much poorer countries than Denmark exhibit the same mental health patterns as bottom quintile groups in Denmark. So... "income threshold, not income inequality" probably isn't true in that sense. I wouldn't jump to the opposite conclusion either, that absolute income thresholds don't matter either. I just don't think we can reach conclusions about social issues in perfect isolation from each other. Society doesn't work that way, so it's hard to reach conclusions about it that way. In practice, income and income inequality within societies exist in an interlinked way. We don't generally affect one without the other. We can't easily study/measure it either. Parsed as a strict-sih Popperian question, it just ends up being a moot question. Maybe in a human petri dish it's possible that mental health is totally unrelated to income. Does that even mean anything?
- jiggunjer 6y agowhat a verbose way to say correlation isn't causality.
- mrmonkeyman 6y agoNews at 11, lazy undisciplined people make for lousy employees with bad careers. Their kids might also be affected. Breaking news.
- x87678r 6y agoTrue, we should just make everyone high income.
- justatdotin 6y agoexactly. we should cut obscene, insane and downright inhuman incomes down to 'high'.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- wildrhythms 6y agoIf that's what it takes to meet the needs of every individual, then yes.
- cwhiz 6y ago...or that there is a relationship between income and parenting abilities. The study does not attempt to answer the why. Speculation is kind of fruitless.
- patentatt 6y agoI think what you’re hinting at is: is there a tertiary common causal factor that causes both low parenting ability and low income? The relevance being that if we ‘solve’ the income portion then the parenting ability will be unaffected, leading to similar results. I think it’s a worthwhile question, but shouldn’t compel inaction on the income portion. Let’s work on that part and see what happens, how about?
- cwhiz 6y agoI’m not actually hinting or suggesting. I am pushing back on coming to conclusions that are not supported by the research. No one is denying that income inequality doesn’t exist.
- sneak 6y ago> Income inequality has and continues to cause detriment for societies. No casual link has been established. Try it the other way 'round, it makes more sense.
- sneak 6y ago*causal
- jariel 6y agoSubstance addiction has a inherited component, I don't doubt that people who are more likely to become addicted to something might have less income. Given this study was done in a place with free healthcare it's hard to say how much causality there is here.
- arcbyte 6y agoChildren learn so much by watching. The same behaviors modeled by parents that reduce their income are then learned by the children and repeated. This is how families become locked in generational problems. They can be escaped (obviously) by finding new people who set good examples to learn from.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- iamkroot 6y ago"Parental income as a marker for socioeconomic position during childhood and later risk of developing a secondary care-diagnosed mental disorder examined across the full diagnostic spectrum: a national cohort study" Full article headline, for those who read the title and thought "... obviously?"
- nerdponx 6y agoNot me, I would have assumed that mental illness happens at the same rate, but is better cared for in families with higher incomes.
- iguy 6y agoIf it occurred at exactly the same rate, I'd still expect it to have a downward effect on family income. I mean, it would be extremely surprising if the additional burden of needing to care for a family member with any kind of illness increased income.
- nerdponx 6y agoThat's fair, and I should check myself. I got so caught up in everyone's solecistic discussion of causality that I missed the line in the paper where they specifically disclaim that this is a causal association.
- throwaway7281 6y agoIf you have me guess, what the effect of low access to resources is (time, money, health, job, anything) I will bet having lower resources will have an adverse effect - because that is kind of the definition of it. When I read these studies, I'm thinking that this "fact" is disputed and low access to resource may have positive effects - which is ridiculous. A kind of second order implication of this is that it's more important to research the problem than to solve it (I know you need to understand the problem first, but I think it is not that complicated).
- thih9 6y ago> When I read these studies, I'm thinking that this "fact" is disputed Being critical in a scientific context shouldn’t be wrong. True, it might be hard to balance. > it's more important to research the problem than to solve it Yes, I’d say research is the necessary first step. Human intuition can always be wrong. Regardless, the results of a research can provide useful pointers about next steps.
- learnstats2 6y agoA better HN title would be: "Parental income and later risk of developing a mental disorder"
- boomboomsubban 6y agoSo I don't particularly doubt this studies results, but looking at the first chart it seems to be saying that the top quintile is more likely to be schizophrenic than develop a substance abuse issue. That's a very surprising result to me, and I wonder if something like the private practice omission might explain that one small portion of the data.
- philtar 6y agoInterpretations I can think of, some obviously more reasonable than others: 1. People with mental disorders, tend to have lower paying jobs, and also kids with mental disorders. 2. We must fix income inequality to protect the kids. 3. Low income people should not be allowed to have children. 4. People who will have kids with mental disorders can usually predict that by using their income as a marker (this one kinda breaks the laws of physics but whatever) I'm sure there's more. But just reading the ultra left and ultra right interpretations in this thread immediately killed my creativity.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago>People with mental disorders, tend to have lower paying jobs, and also kids with mental disorders. They adjusted for parental mental disorders.
- tingol 6y ago> 3. Low income people should not be allowed to have children. Maybe it's a good thing you don't get too creative...
- kome 6y agowhen mental disorders will be seen as social disorders first and foremost?
- boomboomsubban 6y ago>The Danish modification of the International Classification of Diseases, Eighth Revision (ICD-8) was utilised from 1969 to 1993, with the Tenth Revision (ICD-10) used from 1994 onwards
- davidn20 6y agoI know people are going to talk about income inequality, but isn't this obvious? That it's better to be richer? You'll have more resources and advantages. A common concept where I'm from is you work harder so you can give your child a better life. My parents immigrated to a country with basically nothing and barely spoke English. I can't imagine what their lives were like, how hard it must have been. I was raised below the poverty line and had free lunch well into high school. They always told me they did everything they did because they wanted me to have a better life. It worked. I am amazed at how far there were able to climb, and it gave me the confident to achieve so much more. My mom routinely calls me a dreamer because I wanted to make six figures. In her world, this is huge, she doesn't understand the world like I do. And, that's okay, she did the best she could, so I achieve so much more. And, hopefully, one day, my child can achieve things I can only dream of. Life is unfair. The way I see it is every one of us was dropped into a race that we didn't ask to be in. Some of us got dropped further along in the race, some of us got dropped further behind. Is it unfair? Fuck yea it is, but what are you going to do? Stay there and complain? Or are you gonna get busy running.
- boomboomsubban 6y agoTelling people with mental disorders to pick themselves up by the bootstraps because life is unfair is a bit ridiculous.
- davidn20 6y agoLet's define mental illness better. We don't lump all bumps, bruises, and broken bones into physical illness. Yea, it's out of touch to tell someone with broken legs to walk it off. But, if someone got the wind knock out of them. That's perfectly fine advice. In fact, I hope and believe the majority of mental illness cases are not serious. Like, most physical cases. It's just harder to see, so people have a harder time properly categorizing it. Which is damaging to a person psyche. If someone has a sprain ankle, but thinks they have cancer. Imagine the unnecessary trauma and hopelessness the person is experiencing.
- 6y ago
- blackrock 6y agoDoes this fall under the “No shit Sherlock!” category?
- dash2 6y agoThis kind of work just makes me angry. Background: I find it highly plausible that low parental income causes increased risk of mental disorders. I also think it is extremely important to know whether low parental income causes mental disorders, and to have a good estimate of the effect size. So I read through this and of course down at the end we get: "It is important to note that rather than investigating the causal effect of parental income per se, we conceptualised parental income as an indicator for an array of measured and unmeasured monetary and non-monetary indices of family’s social environments that are typically interrelated. As our results indicate, controlling for a range of covariates attenuates the relative risk estimates observed, but such estimates would still only constitute partial adjustments as it would never be possible to control for all relevant correlates, and therefore completely disentangle these non-monetary influences from the direct monetary impact." The first sentence is true. Dropping the pompous gobbledegook, it says "we don't know if this is a correlation or a causal link". Yeah, that's what I expected. The second sentence is just bullshit. "it would never be possible to control for all relevant correlates..." - sure, if you do crappy 1980s-style observational research that is all you'll ever get. Meanwhile, for the past, oh, twenty years or more, there have been people doing actual experiments to find out the causal effect of poor people getting more money. I mean, say what you like about Jefffrey Sachs but at least he knew to run an experiment. How does the medical profession continually get away with this garbage social science? Are they stupid? Do they not understand that this work adds zero value? Or are they just pretending not to know about the alternatives - i.e. they're liars? Which is it? Stupid? Or liars? Another piece of flagrant dishonesty is their recommendation: "Interventions to mitigate the disadvantages linked with low income, and better opportunities for upward socioeconomic mobility, are needed to reduce social inequality in mental health". OK, so you just admitted that you don't know whether low income causes mental health problems. But now apparently we need to fix low income so as to stop causing mental health problems. Which is it? If you're a left wing person, God bless you. Now, how about producing some decent social science instead of this worthless garbage? Edit: here's a review of the causal literature on cash transfers from 2016. It includes an entire chapter on health. Relevant quote: "All studies included under question one – examining the effects of cash transfers on the selected outcomes – had to use either an experimental design (i.e. randomised control trial (RCT) or cluster-RCT)57 or a quasi-experimental design that relies on a credible control group." (They did allow for diff-in-diff, which isn't perfect, but at least they are talking about causality.) https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/resource-documents/11316.pdf https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/resource-document...
- 11thEarlOfMar 6y agoI went looking for articles about what personality traits correlate to success. From a 2018 Forbes article, there are 8 'scientifically proven' traits[0]. I surmise that the more of these traits one exhibits, the more likely they will attain 'success', and yes, the article casts it in more nuance than simple financial success: 1. The ability to delay gratification 2. Conscientiousness 3. A belief in free will 4. Being in an open network 5. Childhood adversity 6. Avid reading 7. Past success 8. Grit If we work backwards and imagine persons who have fewer of these traits, it becomes easier to imagine that they'd also be more likely to have mental disorders of increasing severity. A lack of grit and lack of conscientiousness could be signs of depressive personalities, for example. Or not believing in free will and not having an open network may stem from paranoia. My takeaway is simply that social programs may want to focus more on proactive measures to address mental health of children in lower socio-economic circumstances. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/briannawiest/2018/04/23/8-traits-that-are-scientifically-proven-to-predict-future-success/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/briannawiest/2018/04/23/8-trait...
- boomboomsubban 6y agoThe problem with this is that Forbes almost certainly went into that article with the eight traits they wanted to say are important, and then found articles that can suggest their importance. There are countless other traits that likely have the same or a better correlation to success that Forbes doesn't want to encourage.
- soared 6y agoYou almost certainly went into this comment with a bid against Forbes, so it all evens out.
- boomboomsubban 6y agoI am not a fan of Forbes, but I would have the same fault with any arbitrarily picked list of key traits. If you want to make such a list, you need to demonstrate that those traits are the most correlated to success.
- yourapostasy 6y agoCan Danes comment on the availability of mental health care in Denmark? A pernicious issue in the US is mental health, even with "good" health care plans, is quite rationed. So US citizens are heavily incentivized to avoid seeking help. In the US, this might exacerbate the effect the Danish study identified.
- boomboomsubban 6y agoI am not Danish, but they have a socialized health care system covering 99% of the population that covers specialist visits with a general practitioner recommendation.
- yourapostasy 6y agoI'm specifically wondering if there are caps on utilization for those with chronic conditions. This is the part where the vast majority of US health care plans simply seize up and zero out. From a pragmatic national economic perspective, I'd rather have someone with varying degrees of mental health challenges operating at below their productive potential, with some glimmer of hope of future recovery and/or self-maintenance, and consuming some fraction of mental health care workers' staff time, than absolute zero productive delivery, and causing net negative drain on resources from them eventually lashing out and us cleaning up after the mess from lashing out. There are huge ramifications to this kind of posture, not all good, so it isn't all roses, but I think developed nations are sufficiently advanced enough to shoulder this kind of burden, and I come at this from a kind of "no man left behind" type philosophy about it.
- alisonkisk 6y agoThese researchers also found that blue is linked to purple.
- vitiral 6y agoThis makes sense in the United States, where money is tied to things like childcare, meal preparation, and even seeing other children outside of structured school environments. I wonder what the results are in societies where the grandparents regularly take part in child rearing, where kids have unstructured and unsupervised play with their neighbors, and where food is more often prepared for a larger community instead of a single family unit. In the USA these "priveledges" cost money, but they used to be free. I'm sure they also radically affect mental health.
- satellite2 6y ago> National cohort study of persons born in Denmark 1980–2000 (N = 1,051,265).
- vitiral 6y agoI'm just speaking from my experience. Maybe say "Western society" instead of USA
- dorkwood 6y agoOne thing I can remember causing me quite a bit of anxiety as a kid was the clothes I had to wear. I was terrified of school events where it wasn't necessary to wear a uniform, because I knew the other kids would find out that I didn't own any nice clothes. I'd always pretend I got my days mixed up and show up in uniform anyway, but I'm sure I wasn't fooling anyone.
- wefhi 6y agocorrelation does not imply causation
- htnsao 6y agoIt's a sink or swim world.