Inequality and Status Anxiety: Bad Allies of Health and Well-Being, but not for Everyone. The Role of Ideologies, Socioeconomic Status, and Economic Threat

Abstract Economic inequality has been proposed to be linked to lower subjective health and well-being through enhanced status anxiety, but evidence is mixed. We propose that the effects of economic inequality on status anxiety, health and well-being depend on how people perceive it and how threatening it is to them. This paper analyses the effects of perceived economic inequality—in general and in everyday life—on status anxiety, health and well-being, and the conditions under which these effects occur. Moreover, we investigate the role of status anxiety as a mediating mechanism in the effects of economic inequality perceptions on subjective health and well-being. We used nationally representative survey data from four countries and found that those who perceive higher economic inequality in their country and those who experience economic inequality in their daily life experienced higher status anxiety. In turn, the effects of perceiving higher economic inequality on status anxiety were associated with lower life satisfaction and poorer perceived health. However, perceptions of economic inequality were not equally threatening for everyone: Perceiving to live in a highly unequal country was associated with higher status anxiety only among those who endorse system-justifying ideologies. Furthermore, perceiving inequality in everyday life was associated with higher status anxiety only among those who perceived they had insufficient economic resources. Overall, the results support the importance of reducing economic inequality and status anxiety for enhancing health and well-being. We discuss future venues for a more nuanced understanding of the psychological effects of economic inequality.