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Poverty and health outcomes

Poverty affects health outcomes throughout a person’s entire life cycle.  The insidious component is that the negative result may not be expressed while the person is in an impoverished condition. Mothers who are in poverty during their pregnancies may experience more health risks during their delivery, more health risks to their newborn, and markedly more behavioral problems for their child later on.  If a child is in poverty, they will have worse health outcomes during their adulthood's. This is especially pronounced for certain ailments such as heart disease and diabetes.  This effect is present even if a person escapes poverty during adulthood, suggesting a lasting effect of the stress of poverty encountered during childhood or adolescence.  Likewise, if an adult lives within an area deemed “poverty dense”, they will have worse health outcomes, on average, than their non-poverty neighborhood peers.  This result is observed after controlling for factors like age, race, and lifestyle choices.  This suggests that the unique stresses of life within an impoverished community contribute to poorer health outcomes, without any assumed detrimental behavior on the part of the resident.

Poverty and mental health

Poverty also has a complex relationship with mental health.  Poverty is a stressful condition that merits its own mental state, “poverty distress”.  Poverty is also a precursor or risk factor for mental illness, particularly mood disorders, such as depression and anxiety. Schizophrenia is also more strongly associated with poverty, a claim which proves difficult to measure.  In a sort of reciprocating relationship, having mental illness is a major risk factor for being in poverty.  Having a mental illness may inhibit a person’s ability to work or deter employees from hiring them.

               A hypothesis known as “drift hypothesis”, posits that for people with psychiatric disorders (primarily schizophrenia), they tend to fall further down the socio-economic ladder as their condition reduces their functionality.  This hypothesis is an effort to establish that people with profoundly limiting psychiatric symptoms are more likely to descend economically, not that the financially challenged are more likely to present severe psychiatric disorders. People experiencing less severe symptoms are less likely to be affected by “drift”.  

With those in poverty having greater likelihood of suffering from mental illness, the benefit of access to clinical psychotherapy treatments has been explored. Despite numerous barriers for access to care for low-income individuals, their is evidence that those who do receive care respond with significant improvements. This research supports policy measures for improved outreach and access-to-care measures designed to benefit those with low-incomes and mental health disorders.

Healthcare

Despite growing concern about access to healthcare for those who cannot afford private insurance, research suggests that insurance coverage will not make dramatic differences in several critical health metrics.  Access to Medicaid for low-income adults aided in diagnosis of metabolic disease, saw a reduction in diagnosis of mental health disorders, and reduced incurrence of “catastrophic medical costs” by patients dramatically. While these positive effects were observed, outcomes for heart disease, diabetes, and other physical health characteristics were not meaningfully improved.  It has been posited that one year, the duration of the study, is an insufficient length to fully observe the divergent health outcomes that would be characteristic of an experiment with a lengthier time-table.