Poverty, Material Hardship, and Mental Health among Workers in Three Front-Line Service Occupations

an article by Bill McCarthy and Ryan Finnigan (University of California-Davis, USA), Angela Carter (University of California Berkeley, USA), and Mikael Jansson and Cecilia Benoit (University of Victoria, BC, Canada) published in Journal of Poverty Volume 22 Issue 4 (2018)

Abstract

Many studies document links between income poverty, material hardship, and mental health; however, we know less about the mental health consequences of within-person changes in income poverty and material hardship, particularly for low-income workers.

The authors examine these relationships with longitudinal data from a sample of frontline service workers interviewed in two cities (one each in the United States and Canada).

Mixed-effects regression models show between- and within-person differences in income poverty are associated with changes in material hardship, and between- and within-person differences in material hardship are associated with poorer mental health and depression.

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