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. 2016 Mar 12:16:257.
doi: 10.1186/s12889-016-2926-z.

Socio-economic development and emotion-health connection revisited: a multilevel modeling analysis using data from 162 counties in China

Zonghuo Yu  1   2 , Fei Wang  3
Affiliations

Socio-economic development and emotion-health connection revisited: a multilevel modeling analysis using data from 162 counties in China

Zonghuo Yu et al. BMC Public Health. .

Abstract

Background: Substantial research has shown that emotions play a critical role in physical health. However, most of these studies were conducted in industrialized countries, and it is still an open question whether the emotion-health connection is a "first-world problem".

Methods: In the current study, we examined socio-economic development's influence on emotion-health connection by performing multilevel-modeling analysis in a dataset of 33,600 individuals from 162 counties in China.

Results: Results showed that both positive emotions and negative emotions predicted level of physical health and regional Gross Domestic Product Per Capita (GDPPC) had some impact on the association between emotion and health through accessibility of medical resources and educational status. But these impacts were suppressed, and the total effects of GDPPC on emotion-health connections were not significant.

Conclusions: These results support the universality of emotion-health connection across levels of GDPPC and provide new insight into how socio-economic development might affect these connections.

Keywords: Accessibility of medical resources; Educational status; Emotion-health connection; GDP.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Mediation model showing the relationships between GDPPC and emotion-health connection as mediated by accessibility of medical resources and educational status. In this multilevel random-coefficient model, positive emotion, negative emotion, and health were individual-level variables, and GDPPC, educational status and accessibility of medical resources were county-level variables. Unstandardized regression coefficients are shown, and standard errors are given in parentheses. One asterisk indicate significant coefficients (p < .05), two asterisks indicate significant coefficients (p < .01)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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