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Effects of Minority Status and Perceived Discrimination on Mental Health

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Abstract

Based in a minority social stress perspective, this study uses propensity score matching techniques to assess the impact of self-reported discrimination on mental health. Using a sample of 14,609 young adults from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult  Health, we explore whether the effects of discrimination vary across status characteristics (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and body mass), including both majority and minority populations. Further we investigate the heterogeneous effects of discrimination across propensity scores, or probabilities of experiencing discrimination. We find that self-reported discrimination increases the average perceived stress score and depressive symptoms score by roughly ½ standard deviation, but is not related to anxiety. Further, our results show that while all groups are negatively affected by discrimination, the magnitude of the impact is largest among groups with the lowest propensity scores.

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Notes

  1. Sample sizes vary for minority group-specific analyses, as well as for analyses that employ nearest neighbor matching strategies. N sizes for these groups are provided in tables.

  2. Stress and anxiety measures were only asked in Wave IV, thus we cannot control for these at baseline.

  3. Ancillary analyses suggest that bisexual and mostly heterosexual respondents do not statistically differ in their reports of discrimination, nor do gay and mostly gay respondents.

  4. For group-specific models, propensity score models did not include controls for their specific sociodemographic group (e.g., models restricted to black respondents did not include a control for race/ethnicity).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Utah, 380 S 1530 E Rm 301, Salt Lake City, UT, 84112, USA

    Bethany G. Everett

  2. University of Kansas, Lawrence, USA

    Jarron Saint Onge

  3. University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, USA

    Stefanie Mollborn

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  1. Bethany G. Everett
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  2. Jarron Saint Onge
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Correspondence to Bethany G. Everett.

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Table 5 Means of covariates by treatment for total and matched sample
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Everett, B.G., Onge, J.S. & Mollborn, S. Effects of Minority Status and Perceived Discrimination on Mental Health. Popul Res Policy Rev 35, 445–469 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-016-9391-3

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