title: Income deprivation and mental well-being: the role of non-cognitive skills.
abstract: We show that the positive relation between income deprivation and mental health is affected by an individual's non-cognitive skills. Income deprivation is operationalized as the Yitzhaki index, i.e., as a function of the sum of income differences between an individual and others in her reference group who are more affluent. Non-cognitive skills are extracted from a Locus of Control questionnaire and the Big Five Inventory, a self-report measurement of an individual in regard to five aspects of personality: conscientiousness, neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness and open-mindedness. The results, based on the 2002-2010 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel dataset (SOEP), show that deprivation is negative and significantly related with mental health. However, neurotic individuals are more deprivation-sensitive than are others. Compared to the mean effect, a one standard deviation rise in neuroticism is associated with a deprivation effect that is 36.6% and 51.9% larger among men and women, respectively. Although to a lesser extent, extraverted men and conscientious women are also found to be more deprivation-sensitive than are others, the corresponding figures being 31.1% and 45.9%, respectively. These findings suggest that personality differences should be taken into account in the design of policies, practices and initiatives aimed at alleviating the well-being costs of income deprivation.
authors.affiliation: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain. Electronic address: maite.blazquez@uam.es.
authors.forename: Maite
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Blázquez Cuesta
authors.affiliation: CEEAplA and IZA, Spain.
authors.forename: Santiago
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Budría
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D007182:Income; D008297:Male; D008603:Mental Health; D008875:Middle Aged; D017059:Models, Econometric; D010551:Personality; D011203:Poverty / Q000523:psychology*; D012737:Sex Factors; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors
keywords: Deprivation; Fixed effects model; Mental health; Non-cognitive skills