socioeconomic conditions and risk of mental depression an empirical analysis for brazilian citizens社会经济条件和心理抑郁的风险实证分析巴西公民.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Economics Research International Volume 2012, Article ID 278906, 16 pages doi:10.1155/2012/278906 Research Article Socioeconomic Conditions and Risk of Mental Depression: An Empirical Analysis for Brazilian Citizens 1, 2 2 ´ 3 Marcelo Justus dos Santos, Henrique Coelho Kawamura, and Ana Lucia Kassouf 1 Department of Economics, Ponta Grossa State University, Ponta Grossa, PR, Brazil 2 PPGEA-ESALQ-University of Sao Paulo, Piracicaba, SP, Brazil ˜ 3 Department of Economics, ESALQ-University of Sao Paulo, Piracicaba, SP, Brazil ˜ Correspondence should be addressed to Marcelo Justus dos Santos, marcelojustus@.br Received 30 August 2011; Revised 8 December 2011; Accepted 16 January 2012 Academic Editor: Rati Ram Copyright © 2012 Marcelo Justus dos Santos et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The aim of this study is to investigate whether there is any relationship between socioeconomic factors and mental depression, specifically in connection with family income and education. Our empirical model was estimated using the database of three National Household Sampling Surveys (1998, 2003, and 2008) and their special supplements on the health status of the Brazilian population. Analyses for men and women were conducted separately. Family income proved to be a protective factor against depression