Institute for Family Studies senior fellow Laurie DeRose flags a new study in Demography making the case that higher income inequality contributes to higher levels of death among adults 45 and older.
The study identifies two possible ways inequality could lead to higher mortality. First, through status anxiety, which the authors note has been shown to “increase stress levels and chronic inflammation and have been widely associated with adverse consequences for health and mortality, including poor self-rated health, obesity, depression, and cardiovascular illness.”
Second, the authors theorize that income inequality can be “socially corrosive” to communities, undermining trust and civic engagement. “This in turn shapes mortality risk,” the authors write. “For instance, local areas can differ in their provision of cardiopulmonary resuscitation in out-of-hospital cardiac arrests or in engagement with public infrastructure in reporting hazardous or unsafe environments. Neighborhood corrosion can not only reduce social engagement, increase the risk of accidental death, and weaken community life, it can also trigger hostility and violence, which are especially relevant in local areas, between individuals who are in close proximity.”
The authors then crunch some data coming from the University of Michigan’s Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the “longest-running longitudinal household survey in the world.”
I don’t doubt that the authors found a relationship between inequality and higher levels of mortality. But unless I am mistaken, they did not control for what could be the real driving factor here: marriage.
America has had income inequality before, even higher than we have today. But in the past, both the rich and poor still got married. Almost everyone was born and raised in a married household.
That is no longer the case. Today’s income inequality has also become family inequality. Among the poorest quintile, just 26% of adults are married, while 60% of those in the wealthiest quintile are married. As recently as 1970, marriage rates were equal for poor and rich alike.
There are two ways that low marriage rates could lead to higher mortality rates. First, violence. It is well documented that communities with large numbers of unmarried men are far more violent than communities in which most men are married. This is why polygamous societies have higher rates of murder and rape than monogamous societies.
Second, both single men and women are more likely to die from substance abuse than their married counterparts. This shouldn’t be surprising since it is well established that married men are far healthier than single and divorced men.
Declining male working-class wages absolutely have played a role in the collapse of the American family. But I haven’t really seen any evidence that inequality per se is to blame — that the poor are less healthy because the rich are marginally richer.
If we want more people to live happier, healthier, and longer lives, we should look to solving our nation’s marriage crisis, not inequality.
