Executive Summary: “An Empirical Investigation of the Relationship Between Wealth and Health Using the Survey of Consumer Finances” by John Mullahy, Stephanie A. Robert, Audra T. Wenzlow, and Barbara L. Wolfe

While the relationship between income and health has been rigorously studied, the relationship between wealth and health has received relatively little attention by researchers and the public. Wealth may arguably be better measure of a person’s economic resources than current earnings, and wealth unarguably differentiates financially better-off and worse-off individuals with similar incomes. Yet this factor has been largely neglected from most studies on health inequities. The relationship between health and income is positive, and strongest between low and middle-income individuals. Does a similar relationship exist between health and wealth?

            Wenzlow, Mullahy, Robert and Wolfe explore the differences in wealth and income in relation to health, both by race and by age. Since few surveys collect accurate, if any measures of wealth, the authors draw on a very specific data source that is known for accurately representing the wealth distribution in the U.S., the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). The SCF collects demographic, health and income, as well as household asset information, from 4,000 to 5,000 families every three years. Compared to past studies on the relationship between health and wealth that have focused on older populations, this study examines the health and financial resources of the working aged population between ages 25 and 54 in the U.S. 

            The authors find that the health-wealth relationship, like the health-income relationship, is positive and highly non-linear; health differences exist throughout the wealth distribution, but wealth is the strongest predictor of health at the low end of the wealth distribution. Over 30 percent of individuals in the lowest 10th percentile of wealth reported poor or fair health, compared to 40 percent of those with low incomes.  Meanwhile, only 10 percent of those in the highest wealth and income categories do so. There are differences as well as similarities in the shape of the health gradient in wealth compared to that of income. While rates of poor health decline with household-size-adjusted income up to approximately $50,000, most of the improvement in health occurs within the first $15,000 of net worth. 

As a typical individual ages, health declines while income and wealth increase until retirement, such that the health gradient may differ throughout the life course.  Previous research suggests that the income-health correlation grows stronger through age 54, whereas this study finds that wealth (rather than income) is differentially related to health depending on age. This relationship, however, is apparent only among whites. The estimated relationship between wealth and health is weaker among blacks. The authors suggest that further research is needed to understand what processes underlie the observed health-wealth relationship, and how it varies between whites and black over the life cycle.