The mental health challenges of unemployment are well documented, but perhaps less is known about just what a drop in income can do to our brain.  A new study from Columbia Mailman School of Public Health attempts to understand the impact on our brain health of a significant drop in income.

The researchers followed participants, each of which were aged between 23 and 35 at the start of the research, over a 30 year time period that included the recession of the late 2000s, during which time many people experienced high levels of financial instability.  Each participant reported their annual household income every three to five years over a 20 year period.

The data placed people into one of three main groups: one of around half of respondents, whose income did not drop, a second group comprising around 1/3 of participants, whose income had fallen by around 25% or more once, and a group of around 10% who had experienced several drops of that nature.

Brain health

Throughout the research, volunteers were given a variety of mental tests designed to gauge how well they completed tasks and how long it took them to do so.  It transpired that people who had suffered two or more significant drops in their income performed worst on the mental tasks by a couple of percentage points.

“For reference, this poor performance is greater than what is normally seen due to one year in aging, which is equivalent to scoring worse by only 0.71 points on average or 0.53 percent,” the researchers explain.

The participants who had suffered multiple income drops also took longer to complete the tasks.

The researchers then took a group of several hundred of the volunteers and gave them MRI brain scans both at the start of the study and then 20 years later.  The scans aimed to measure both the total brain volume and the volumes of certain parts of the brain.

The analysis showed that those people who had suffered two or more drops in their income had smaller total brain volume than their peers.  Even those who had only experienced a single drop in their income had lower connectivity in the brain.

The researchers propose a few hypotheses for their findings.  For instance, they proffer that those with more unstable income may have poorer access to healthcare, and therefore may not be as successful in avoiding or managing conditions such as diabetes.

While the researchers accept that their findings are not conclusive, they nonetheless believe that they warrant greater exploration to better understand the impact unemployment can have on our brain health.