Economic Disparities, Life Events, and the Gender Mental Health Gap

Thi Thao Nguyen (), Kim Huong Nguyen () and Nicholas Rohde
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Thi Thao Nguyen: University of Queensland
Kim Huong Nguyen: University of Queensland

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2024, vol. 174, issue 3, No 12, 1053-1100

Abstract: Abstract This paper studies factors explaining the gender mental health gap using Australian data. We show that men have significantly higher mean outcomes and the left tail of the combined distribution is disproportionately female. Using regression-based decompositions, we examine the degree that both socioeconomic inequalities and life experience account for this phenomenon. We find that disparities in income play a substantial role, and subject to an assumption of exogeneity, would be enough to account for the gender gap amongst individuals with very poor psychological wellbeing. We also examine the mental health effects of various negative life experience, such as the death of a family member or being a victim of violence. At the individual level, these variables have large effect sizes but are not strongly correlated with gender to explain our mental health disparities.

Keywords: Mental health; Life experience; Negative life events; Inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I14 I18 I31 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1007/s11205-024-03424-6

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