Wage gap may explain why women are more depressed
A study by the Mailman School of Public Health shows that for every dollar that an American male makes, a femaie counterpart only makes 82 cents. The wage gap may lead to anxiety and depression for women.
Jonathan Platt, a PhD student in Epidemiology, and colleagues looked at a survey of 22,581 working adults Americans, finding that among women whose income was lower than their male counterparts, the odds of major depression were nearly two-and-a-half times higher, and odds of anxiety were more than four times higher, than men matched for age, education, occupation, family composition, and other factors.
Yet when women’s income was greater than their male counterparts, women’s odds for having anxiety or depression was nearly equivalent to men.
“Our results show that some of the gender disparities in depression and anxiety may be due to the effects of structural gender inequality in the workforce and beyond,” says Platt, first author of the paper. “The social processes that sort women into certain jobs, compensate them less than equivalent male counterparts, and create gender disparities in domestic labor that have material and psychosocial consequences.”
Researchers suggest that policies like paid parental leave, affordable childcare, and flexible work schedules should be passed to close the wage gap.
“Greater attention to the fundamental mechanisms that perpetuate wage disparities is needed,” says Katherine Keyes, assistant professor of Epidemiology and senior author, “not only because it is unjust, but so that we may understand and be able to intervene to reduce subsequent health risks and disparities.”
Their findings are published in Social Science and Medicine.
