Written by: Anne Heaney

Joseph D. Wolfe, Ph.D., an Associate Professor at UAB, and colleagues published a manuscript in the Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences in June 2021, titled “Varieties of Financial Stressors and Midlife Health Problems, 1996–2016.” Wolfe and his team investigated the impact of financial stressors on physical and mental health outcomes during midlife.

In their analysis, researchers found evidence of relationships between diagnosed health problems — psychiatric disorders and high blood pressure — and multiple types of wealth loss, debts, and bankruptcies.

This manuscript is a continuation of his research, “Who’s Hurt Most by Economic Shocks? Obesity and Health After Major Financial Loss,” which was funded by a UAB Obesity Health Disparities Research Center (OHDRC) pilot grant. The OHDRC is supported by a grant from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (U54MD000502).

“I’ve been interested in the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and health since I arrived at UAB in 2013, but it was the OHDRC pilot project grant that gave me the chance to extend my research into financial stressors such as wealth loss, debt, and bankruptcy,” Wolfe said.

When reviewing the findings, Wolfe found it surprising how strong the relationship between financial problems and health issues is.

“Both the original research project and our recent paper have produced surprising outcomes,” Wolfe said. “When I began the project, I knew there was a link between debt and health, but it was through the research that I was able to see just how strongly connected they are, especially unsecured debt (e.g., debt from credit cards, medical bills, and loans). Even after adjusting for a large array of control variables, the association between debt and midlife health problems persisted.”

Based on their results, the team is now examining whether additional social and contextual factors help explain the association between debt and midlife health problems. “We’re also looking at other financial and health-related topics such as the relationships between race/ethnicity, types of debt, and midlife obesity,” Wolfe said.