Sustainability, Vol. 11, Pages 5700: Effect of Income Inequality on Health in Quebec: New Insights from Panel Data (Sustainability)

We investigated the relationship between income inequality and all-cause mortality in 87 regional county municipalities (RCMs) of Quebec (Canada) while accounting for time lags and effects of other socioeconomic variables. We presumed to be true that income inequality entails stress and depression. Thus, these phenomena were tested as mediating factors. The data used consist of eight (8) area-based chronological variables: mortality rate, Gini index, disposable income, criminality rate, number of physicians, density of population, and the proportion of people reporting feeling stressed or depressed. The association between income inequality and mortality was analyzed using the generalized method of moments (GMM) approach with local fixed effects to control unobservable characteristics. Our results show that higher income inequality led to a significant increase of mortality rate with a time lag of 5 years when socioeconomic characteristics were held constant. As expected, households’ disposable income and mortality rate were negatively associated. Moreover, mortality rate was positively associated with population density and negatively associated with the number of physicians. Finally, only depression showed the potential to act as a mediating factor. Based on our findings, we suggest that, over time, income inequality, by amplifying depression phenomena, increases the mortality rate in Quebec’s RCMs.