An economic link between marriage and depression…
Tuesday August 22, 2023. Remembering when my son was born in 1973. I got a job on the graveyard shift cleaning the Hartford Civic Center. This one is for all the working poor who have to tolerate the dip sh*t research that unfortunately gets published from time to time….
There is a link between marriage and depression.in American society. The beleaguered institution of marriage is linked to lower evidence of depression symptoms in some humans, according to recent research findings.
The link is strongest in households where the total income is below $60,000.
For couples earning more than this, marriage does not provide the same benefits to mental health.
In fact, at higher levels of income, even humans who have never married have far fewer symptoms of depression.
The reason is probably that at lower incomes, both partners can pool their resources, enjoy more financial security and so worry less.
Dr Ben Lennox Kail, the study’s first author, said:
“We looked at the interrelationships between marriage, income and depression, and what we found is that the benefit of marriage on depression is really for people with average or lower levels of income.
Specifically, people who are married and earning less than $60,000 a year in total household income experience fewer symptoms of depression.
But above that, marriage is not associated with the same kind of reduction in symptoms of depression.”
The findings support a theory called the marital resource model.
This is the idea that the physical and psychological benefits of marriage are, in part, due to the pooling of resources (this is a less than uplifting take on the power of human connection, and it deserves a righteous b*tch slap, which I shall soon provide). Dashnaw does not disappoint.
Dr Kail opined:
“For people who are earning above $60,000, they don’t get this bump because they already have enough resources.
About 50% of the benefit these households earning less than $60,000 per year get from marriage is an increased sense of financial security and self-efficacy, which is probably from the pooling of resources.
Also, it’s interesting to note, at the highest levels of income, the never married fare better in terms of depression than the married.
They have fewer symptoms of depression than married people.
All of these are subclinical levels of depression, meaning the disease is not severe enough to be clinically referred to as depression, but can nevertheless impact your health and happiness.”
A different take on the research
I have no doubt that the pooling of resources may result in “more financial security” and “less worry” for any humans with marginal resources. But I fear that the researchers missed a key factor because of a demographic blind spot.. being poor is hard fu*king work.
About 20 years ago Barbara Ehrenreich examined the experience of living in poverty and writing about it in what was perhaps the most important book in social science as we shifted centuries.
Ehrenreich chronicled many of the difficulties low wage workers face, including the hidden costs involved in such necessities as shelter (the poor often have to spend significantly more on daily hotel costs than they would if they could get ahead enough to pay to rent on an apartment
But that would require a security deposit and perhaps even a first-and-last month rental fee upfront. Ehrenreich also described how the poor have to buy food that is both more expensive and less healthy than they would if they had reliable access to refrigeration and ordinary cooking appliances.
Being poor is also a highly stressful mind fu*k.
I most appreciated how Ehrenreich destroys the notion that low-wage jobs are inherently unskilled. Barbara told America how manual labor actually required highly demanding feats of stamina, focus, memory, and quick thinking.
Some of the working poor endure constant and repetitive motion injuries, often resulting in additional stress from the pain. Holding a job amidst constant turnover; living days filled with degrading and uninteresting tasks (scrubbing toilets and mopping floors), will obviously produce significant amounts of workplace stress.
But these folks don’t complain…because we don’t see or hear them…
I see this study as more related to the recent posts I did on gratitude. These researchers assume that there are resources on both ends to share… because they can’t conceive otherwise. They are wrong.
A Happy Marriage Can Help “Hold” the Stress of Working While Poor… Thus Alleviating Depression by Having a Supportive Spouse… a Pearl Beyond Price…the Peace of Mind of Being Cherished and Understood.
The gift of holding a stress reducing conversation with someone you love, and the gratitude for human connection, are far more fu*king meaningful to humans with sh*tty lives than the mere the “pooling of resources.”
In my humble opinion, the marital resource model is by no means telling the whole story of the interplay of marriage and depression. There is abundant, soulful work going unseen.
Thank you for indulging me in my rant, gentle reader. Be well and Godspeed.
RESEARCH:
Daniel L. Carlson, Ben Lennox Kail, Socioeconomic variation in the association of marriage with depressive symptoms,
Social Science Research, Volume 71, 2018, Pages 85-97, ISSN 0049-089X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2017.12.008.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X1630789X)
The study was published in the journal Social Science Research (Carlson & Kail, 2018).
