How can income affect your health

This study looks at hundreds of theories to consider how income influences health. There is a graded association between money and health — increased income equates to better health. But the reasons are debated. How does money influence health?

For example, strokes affect 3. The more money you make, the less likely you are to have a stroke, according to the data. Increased disease incidence with decreasing income is only part of the story. The graph below shows that as income goes up, fewer people say they have fair or poor health. While In their report, Aron and her colleagues aim to tease out how income affects people's health, keeping in mind that health also influences income someone with poor health will have a harder time working.

Still, the brief identifies a few explicit ways income affects health:. These bullet points dramatically simplify the numerous and complicated ways income affects health, and it's important to note that every individual will experience different pressures in various degrees. The researchers acknowledge that poor health and disabilities can get in the way of people earning more money, making it difficult to say whether in any given scenario low income causes poor health or vice versa.

All the relationships between health and income are very complex and hard to study, but there's no question that there's a strong connection between low income and poor health. The researchers point out that public policies primarily considered for their economic impact have consequences for health, too.

For example, the researchers cited a study comparing mortality in unemployed Americans and Germans. The paper, published in the American Journal of Public Health , found unemployed Americans were more likely to die than working Americans, but Germans were no less likely to die if they were unemployed.

Aron hopes the report will encourage policymakers to consider health effects in discussions about economic problems and initiatives. Conversations about employment and training programs, for example, "are as much about health as about economic self sufficiency," Aron said. For you. We find an elasticity of only 0.

Both sets of estimates are similar to those obtained by Kenkel , who, using US data, finds an income elasticity for preventive care of 0. Hence, our results are consistent with evidence from microeconomic studies that support the notion that healthcare is a necessity, rather than a luxury good.

Our results indicate that an expansion of income in developed economies is likely to increase the use of private and preventive healthcare but will leave the use of public healthcare largely unchanged. An expansion of healthcare expenditure is likely to come from higher healthcare costs associated with new healthcare technology Breyer If so, why? This article is published in collaboration with Vox EU.

Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum. The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum. I accept. Industry Agenda How income influences our healthcare decisions.

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