Abstract
BackgroundThis paper aimed to identify whether high psychological distress is associated with an increased risk of income and multidimensional poverty amongst older adults in Australia.MethodsWe undertook longitudinal analysis of the nationally representative Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australian (HILDA) survey using modified Poisson regression models to estimate the relative risk of falling into income poverty and multidimensional poverty between 2010 and 2012 for males and females, adjusting for age, employment status, place of residence, marital status and housing tenure; and Population Attributable Risk methodology to estimate the proportion of poverty directly attributable to psychological distress, measured by the Kessler 10 scale.ResultsFor males, having high psychological distress increased the risk of falling into income poverty by 1.68 (95% CI: 1.02 to 2.75) and the risk of falling into multidimensional poverty by 3.40 (95% CI: 1.91 to 6.04). For females, there was no significant difference in the risk of falling into income poverty between those with high and low psychological distress (p = 0.1008), however having high psychological distress increased the risk of falling into multidimensional poverty by 2.15 (95% CI: 1.30 to 3.55). Between 2009 and 2012, 8.0% of income poverty cases for people aged 65 and over (95% CI: 7.8% to 8.4%), and 19.5% of multidimensional poverty cases for people aged 65 and over (95% CI: 19.2% to 19.9%) can be attributed to high psychological distress.ConclusionsThe elevated risk of falling into income and multidimensional poverty has been an overlooked cost of poor mental health.
Highlights
This paper aimed to identify whether high psychological distress is associated with an increased risk of income and multidimensional poverty amongst older adults in Australia
This paper aims to determine whether having a high level of psychological distress increases an older individual’s risk of falling into income poverty or multidimensional poverty and how many additional people fall into poverty as a result of high psychological distress, Methods
Most people with low psychological distress who fell into multidimensional poverty had low income and an insufficient level of education attainment, whereas the majority of people with high psychological distress had low income and poor health, or low income, poor health and an insufficient level of education attainment (Table 2)
Summary
As such, increasing attention is being paid to the wellbeing and living standards of older people [19, 22, 35, 53, 54]. Considerable attention has been paid to the macroeconomic impacts of an older population within Australia – increased health care costs, and welfare payments, and reduced productivity from a lower aged-dependency ratio (the proportion of working aged people to the proportion of people of retirement age) [50]. Older people with depression faced the third highest annual costs for health care. This highlights growing interest in the health - living standards nexus, including mental health issues, amongst older Australians, and how this affects the well-being of a growing proportion of the population
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