Briefing note: A dynamic model of disposable income impacts on mental health

Abstract

This note provides an overview of the provisional results from a dynamic microsimulation model called MINOS which assesses the impact on an individual's mental health (measured as SF-12 Mental Component Score) that result because of changes to household disposable income. There are five pathways that link household disposable income to mental heath (housing quality, neighbourhood safety, nutritional quality, tobacco use, and loneliness). We estimate change in SF-12 under three different scenarios: an uplift to the living wage for low earning employees; an uplift to child benefit, applied universally as £25 per child translated to household disposable income; and the impact that the new energy price `cap' will have on household disposable income. As well as the change in SF-12 MCS at the whole population level, we present the change in the sub-populations impacted by each policy experiment and assess the spatial distribution of each policy in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. We find that raising disposable income through the living wage and child benefit uplift scenarios have a modest positive impact on overall mental health and a larger impact in the intervention groups. The impact of increased energy prices has the effect of reducing household disposable income, and so has a negative impact on overall mental health. This note represents work in progress: further detailed methodology, reproducible code and latest results can be accessed via the project github page at https://github.com/Leeds-MRG/Minos.