Income, debt and poverty

Why money and resources matter for health

A reliable and adequate income enables us to access other building blocks of health like housing and transport, and essentials such as food and heating. Alongside our income, having resources, such as savings or assets like property, provide a buffer against unexpected shocks like illness or losing a job.

Together, our income and resources influence and can enhance our health. This includes the quality and security of our home, the neighbourhoods we can afford to live in, our education and job opportunities. Having greater financial resources also allows us to pay for goods and experiences, such as recreational and social activities, that can improve our physical and mental health.

Living without an adequate or reliable income or resources greatly restricts our options and opportunities. And it affects all the other building blocks of a healthy life. It can cause chronic stress, reduce our control over our circumstances, undermine our mental health, and have a knock-on effect on physical health. When we can’t reliably meet our needs or those of our families, the resulting worry, anxiety and constrained choices can have profound and lasting impacts.

Wherever we are on the income distribution, our health is likely to be better as our level of income rises. Our income determines how well we can meet our essential needs and living costs, such as heating our homes or having enough nutritious food to eat. Having a higher income can provide extra money to support other non-essential building blocks of health, such as improving the quality of our homes and taking part in social activities.

The reliability and stability of our income over the long term matters for our health too. When we feel our income is stable or we have less uncertainty over our finances, we are more likely to have reduced anxiety, as well as to adopt healthy habits.

The relationship between income and health can be two-way. Having a lower income means more sources of stress that can both harm our health and restrict us from improving it. And poor health can limit our opportunities for good and stable employment, or result in loss of work, which both affect our income.

The relationship between debt and health is two-way. Problem debt – when our debts risk becoming unmanageable – can mean we struggle to make repayments, borrow more money or risk not affording essentials. This can harm our physical and mental health by causing stress and reducing opportunities to improve our health. Poor health can be a trigger for problem debt, for example if it leads to loss of work or a reduction in our income.

Financial strain and hardship increase our risk of mental and physical health problems. Research shows that people in financial hardship are at greater risk of mental health problems, such as anxiety, stress and depression.

Financial strain can have an impact on our physical health. This can be directly through conditions such as hypertension, which is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, and back pain, which can affect our quality of life and our ability to work, or indirectly through its effect on our behaviours.

Poverty – where our resources are not enough to meet our minimum needs – affects our health in several ways, which often overlap. Being unable to afford a decent standard of living might mean:

• we can’t heat our homes
• we have to live in low-quality housing
• we can’t buy healthy food
• we get into debt
• we can’t have social lives, exercise, or play a part in our communities.

All these factors affect our health and wellbeing, either directly, for example through increased respiratory problems or by causing chronic stress that in turn has an impact on our physical and mental health. A high cost of living and the affordability of housing and food puts greater pressure on household budgets and affects people’s health.

Poverty is associated with worse health throughout our lives. In childhood, it is linked to worse infant mortality, low birth weight, obesity, asthma and tooth decay. In adulthood, poverty is linked to diabetes, cardiovascular disease and premature mortality – often as a result of a higher risk of deaths due to drugs, alcohol and suicide.