Health and wealth are more linked than you think, and it’s more than just their one-letter difference.
Extensive medical research and insights from experts reveal that an individual’s wealth can significantly impact their health, affecting everything from stress levels to lifespan.
“Individuals with greater wealth tend to experience better health, live longer, and have lower rates of chronic diseases,” nonprofit, nonpartisan health think tank The Milken Institute wrote in a March 2025 report. “This relationship is not merely coincidental; it reflects the material benefits that financial security provides.”
The Independent spoke with several mental and physical health experts to find out the different ways that wealth - or lack thereof - impacts health.
Money Mind Games
The connection between wealth and mental health got a jumpstart in 2010 when a study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences asserted that Americans’ emotional well-being increased as income increased, but only up to $75,000 per year. After that, well-being leveled out.
Since then, researchers have updated that mental-health threshold to $90,000, according to a 2023 article in the same journal.
Happiness, which is a part of mental health, increases with wealth, too. But unlike emotional well-being, there is no point at which the effect is minimized, the article noted.
“Americans who are making more money report that their present moments are happier and that this effect does not weaken across the income spectrum,” the article said. “Additional income continues to make everyone happier, both the poor and the rich.”
Other aspects of mental health are impacted by an individual’s wealth, said Chelsea Hudson, a licensed therapist and CEO of Chicago-based Cityscape Counseling.
“I’ve noticed that increased income usually correlates with improved mental health up to a certain point,” Hudson told The Independent in an email. “This is generally a result of a reduction in chronic anxiety associated with financial instability such as worries related to healthcare, housing and childcare-related costs.”
Once a client reaches their definition of “wealthy,” though, mental health can take a turn for the worse. New challenges that come with wealth can be harmful for those who don’t have a strong identity or purpose, she said.
“I have seen these clients struggle with perfectionism, isolation, identity crises as well as the fear of losing their wealth and status,” Hudson said. “Clients who consider themselves rich sometimes struggle relationally, too, either due to being a workaholic or due to fears that people are drawing close to them for their money [versus] their personality.”
While wealthier individuals may have their own set of mental health battles, they have a distinct advantage over those who earn far less than they do.
Adults who live in poverty are at higher risk of substance abuse and chronic stress, the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion notes. Children who live in poverty are more likely to have developmental delays and toxic levels of stress. A lack of resources for impoverished people contributes to the emotional damage they suffer.
Those in poverty typically have “reduced access to resources that are needed to support a healthy quality of life, such as stable housing, healthy foods and safe neighborhoods,” the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion said.
The impact of wealth on a society’s mental state isn’t limited to the United States.
In general, mental well-being is stronger in countries where wealth is more evenly distributed between the wealthiest 1 percent and the rest of the population, according to income and wealth inequality organization Inequality.org.
Schizophrenia risk rates are higher in countries with bigger rich-poor gaps, too.
Bodies Bearing The Cost
As individuals move away from blue-collar and low-income jobs and toward white-collar jobs that earn more money, they can see significant changes to their health.
Lower-pay jobs tend to require “more stressful and physically demanding” work, which has direct health consequences, Inequality.org notes.
“This contributes to a variety of other health problems, such as high blood pressure, back problems, and diabetes,” it wrote.
The stress that financial struggles create can have a system-wide impact on the bodies of lower-paid workers, according to a 2023 article from the Journal of Applied Psychology. In the article, a pair of researchers examined the existing body of research on pay’s influence on health.
It became clear, researcher Samantha Conroy said, that having stress but no effective tools to reduce it was more common among low earners than high ones.
“When people are stressed, they release stress hormones and have a heightened heart rate to address the threat,” Conroy said. “The problem is if you’re overstressed chronically, then it gets under your skin and makes you sick.
“Negative health outcomes like heart disease are potential outcomes of that. Even mortality is … an outcome of that.”
Wealth plays a key role in how someone handles a medical emergency, too, said Dr. Rene Hermes, chief medical officer at Chicago-based family practice Hermes Health.
Wealthier individuals tend to have better resources in those situations.
“When a serious medical event unfolds, a wealthier person will always have access to better care,” Hermes told The Independent in an email. “That is because of personal connections, no insurance network restrictions, social circles that one might belong to, amongst other aspects."
Wealth impacts an individual’s ability to create healthy habits that help prevent sickness and disease, too, said Dr. Elizabeth Rubin, clinical advisor at Phoenix-based Embers Recovery.
“From a public health and medical perspective, income is strongly related to health outcomes as it determines both exposure to risk factors and access to protective resources,” Rubin said in an email to The Independent.
Access plays a big part in that, Rubin said. Everything from a job’s danger level to diagnosis times improves as someone earns more money.
“As an individual’s income increases, there tends to be improvement in their overall physical health due to better access to preventative medicine, healthy eating options, safe housing, lower occupational risks, and earlier diagnosis and treatment for medical problems,” she said.
This article is sponsored by Credit Karma. We may earn a commission if you engage with their services using links in this article.
