ابعاد کنترل روانشناختی والدین: ارتباطات با پرخاشگری فیزیکی و رابطه پیش دبستانی در روسیه

The objective of this paper is three-fold: first, to study the psychological distress of the Latin American poor. Second, to study differences in psychological distress between the poor and the relatively wealthy in Latin America. Third, to study how economic growth impacts the psychological well-being of the poor. This paper uses micro-level information from the Gallup 2007 Survey for 16 Latin American countries to study psychological distress of the poor in Latin America; the survey is representative at the country level. The investigation works with approximately 12,500 observations. Psychological distress is measured on the basis of a set of questions regarding a person’s emotional situation the day before he/she answered the questionnaire. The investigation finds out that the poor show greater psychological distress than the wealthy and that the gap is statistically significant. However, it would be inappropriate to attempt predicting a person’s psychological well-being on the basis of his/her poverty condition alone, since many factors affect people’s psychological well-being. The paper also shows that rapid economic growth seems to be detrimental to the psychological well-being of the poor, and that the impact of economic growth on psychological well-being differs between the poor and the relatively wealthy.

Poverty has acquired greater importance during the last decade as a result of the United Nations Millennium Declaration, which considers poverty abatement as its first Millennium Development Goal. As a consequence of the Declaration more countries have focused on measuring poverty and fostering its reduction over time. Poverty researchers have substantial experience on measuring poverty and on designing social programs to abate it; however, research on the relationship between poverty and psychological well-being is not so vast. Moreover, while the literature suggests that being in poverty may be psychologically distressful, some recent studies conclude that “The lack of any relationship between conventional economic welfare measures and mental health outcomes across a diverse sample of developing countries suggests that poverty, per se, is not a strong determinant of poor mental health” (Das, Do, Friedman, & McKenzie, 2008: 16). The objective of this paper is three-fold: First, to study the psychological distress of the Latin American poor. Second, to study differences in psychological distress between the poor and the relatively wealthy in Latin America. Third, to study how economic growth impacts the psychological well-being of the poor. The paper takes advantage of the Gallup 2007 Survey, which provides micro-level information for more than 12,000 persons in 16 Latin American countries. The survey includes a well-being module which gathers information regarding the emotional situation of the person. There is also the standard socio-demographic and economic information in the survey. Hence, it is possible to study the psychological well-being of the poor and to compare it to that of the mid-income groups and the relatively wealthy. It is also possible to study the impact of country-level conditions, such as economic growth, on the psychological well-being of the poor. In opposition to research findings by Das et al. (2008), this investigation finds out that being in income poverty has, on average, a large and statistically significant psychological well-being impact with respect to both the mid-income group and, specially, the wealthy group in society. In addition, there is a hint about rapid economic growth being distressful for the emotional well-being of those in poverty. The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 reviews the relevant literature on the relationship between income poverty and psychological well-being. Section 3 presents the database and explains the construction of new variables; it also presents descriptive statistics about the psychological well-being of the poor and of the relatively wealthy. Section 4 uses regression analysis to test the hypothesis of the psychological well-being of the poor being lower than that of the rich. Section 5 explores the role of economic growth on the psychological distress of the poor. Section 6 makes some final considerations.