Disparities in Well-Being: Results from a National Survey

Sen's capabilities approach has been widely used to measure and understand differences in economic development and poverty worldwide. Here we apply Capabilities to improve our empirical understanding of disparities in well-being between persons with and without psychiatric conditions.

Lower wages and fewer employment opportunities translate into poverty for persons with psychiatric conditions, but little is known about the full dimensions of that poverty compared to people without such disorders. This study uses data from 6659 individuals interviewed in both the 1997/1998 and 2000/2001 waves of the Healthcare for Communities Survey, a national household survey of US adults that intentionally oversampled persons with low-incomes, high psychological distress and/or high specialty mental health service use. We use the Community Tracking Study, a similar, larger household survey to construct relevant community level information.

Based on univariate analyses supplemented by regression analyses to control for other factors that would explain the disparities, we will present and discuss functioning differences in employment rates, income, social affiliation, health and activity limitations, parenting and shelter for people with and without psychiatric conditions. An overall life-satisfaction measure will be presented as well.