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Social Indicators Research

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01-08-2014

Cultural Access and Mental Health: An Exploratory Study

Authors: Alessandro Crociata, Massimiliano Agovino, Pier Luigi Sacco

Published in: Social Indicators Research | Issue 1/2014

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Abstract

Loss of well-being, rising rates of depression and various psychological illnesses are a public health concern. This study aims to explore the associations between cultural access and mental illness. Applying a panel methodology to the 20 Italian regions (2002–2007 period) the relationship between public health expenditure per-capita (the dependent variable) and hospital discharge rates for different illnesses (the regressors) has been estimated. Then the impact of the private spending in culture (the regressors) on the mental illness—as approximated by the discharge rate for mental illness—(the dependent variable), has been verified via generalised method of moments (GMM) approach. Data came from the National Census of the Italian Institute of Statistics (ISTAT). The results of empirical analysis have highlighted how the discharge rate for mental illness is substantially improved by some forms of cultural consumptions. The coefficients associated with unemployment rates (the control variables) have a positive impact on mental illness, thus suggesting that unemployment has an impact on the discharge rate for mental illness; the greatest impact is observed for the long-term unemployment rate. The results are beneficial for designing and implementing preventive strategies to reduce mental illness and public health expenditure by considering the impact of cultural access.

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The Region-specific variable, time-invariant and activated by the regional dummy, measures the extent to which each region deviates from the average structural relationship common to all regions (the regional fixed effects).

It is the time-specific variable, activated by time dummies, useful to purify the structural relationship, which is common to all Regions, from cyclical variations that are also common to all Regions.

When the tolerance, 1/VIF, assumes values close to unity, there are problems of multicollinearity negligible; on the contrary, when it tends to zero multicollinearity becomes a serious problem. The VIF allows us to rule out problems of multicollinearity when it assumes values lower than 10. There will be problems of multicollinearity when eingenvalue assume values close to zero and when the condition index will take values above 30. Finally we consider the condition number, when this index takes values around 15 multicollinearity will not be a big problem, if it assumes values above 30 multicollinearity may be considered a serious problem.

This test is implemented for both random and fixed effects models (see Drukker 2003).

This study focused on Italy because it find its roots within a seminal research program on cultural access and well-being conducted in Italy by Grossi et al. 2010, 2011.

Constant prices in euro for base year 2000.

The rate of discharge is given by the number of hospital discharges for a given pathology over 10,000 inhabitants.

It was appropriate to refer only to the consumption of culture by residents as the major users of the health system. Including non residents among consumers of culture would have skewed the results.

We express private consumption of culture as percentages of sample individuals accessing any given activity.

The percentage of people seeking employment at age 15 years or older w.r.t. the labor force in the corresponding age group.

The percentage of people seeking employment in age group 15–24 w.r.t. the labor force of the corresponding age group.

The percentage of the number of people looking for work for more than 12 months w.r.t. the labor force.

We define unemployment conditions as follows: short term (being unemployed for less than 3 months), medium term (being unemployed for 3 months up to 2 years), and long-term (being unemployed for 2 years or more).

When we repeat the tests of multicollinearity on the variables considered in the second estimate, we verify that no test reveals problems of multicollinearity. For reasons of space we do not show them; interested readers can request them to the authors.

In the case of serial autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity, we would have to use the feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) estimation method to overcome these problems.

For reasons of space we do not show them; interested readers can request them to the authors.

In particular, the empirical analysis shows no relationship between the discharge rate for mental illness and the following cultural consumption activities: non-classical music, classical music, cinema, theater, radio. Interested readers can request details to the authors.

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Title: Cultural Access and Mental Health: An Exploratory Study
Authors: Alessandro Crociata
Massimiliano Agovino
Pier Luigi Sacco
Publication date: 01-08-2014
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Published in: Social Indicators Research / Issue 1/2014
Print ISSN: 0303-8300
Electronic ISSN: 1573-0921
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-013-0426-4

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