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Objective Mental health disorders are of great social, economic, and policy concern. A higher incidence of major depressive disorder has been reported among those living in or near poverty. Our study examines the extent to which the relationship between income and depression is mediated by measures of material hardship. Methods We use measures of depression at two points in time from the longitudinal Fragile Families Survey to better discern the causal direction of the relationship between income poverty, hardship, and depression. More specifically, we use conditional logistic fixed-effect models that control for time-invariant unmeasured heterogeneity in the sample. Results We found a strong relationship between hardships and depression. The most prominent hardships were problems paying bills and phone turned off. We also found that hardship helped mediate much, though not all, of the link between poverty and depression in the conditional fixed effect logistic regression models. Conclusion Our policy simulations suggest that public health efforts to reduce depression may be enhanced from efforts that focus on specific forms of material hardship.

Food insufficiency is a significant problem in the United States, and poor African American women with children are at especially high risk. An inadequate household food supply can potentially affect the well-being of household members, but it is difficult to distinguish the effects of food insufficiency from risk factors for poor health that are also common among the food insufficient, such as poverty. We examined food insufficiency and physical and mental health among African American and white women (n = 676) who were welfare recipients in 1997. Controlling for common risk factors, women who reported food insufficiency in both 1997 and 1998 were more likely to report fair or poor health at the later date. Food insufficiency in 1998 was significantly associated with meeting the diagnostic screening criteria for recent major depression. Food insufficiency at both times and in 1998 only was related to women's sense of mastery. These findings add to growing evidence that household food insufficiency is associated with poor physical and mental health.

The literature on social capital and entrepreneurship often explores individual benefits of social capital, such as the role of personal networks in promoting self-employment. In this article, we instead examine social capital’s public good aspects, arguing that the benefits of social trust and organization memberships accrue not just to the individual but to the community at large. We test these arguments using individual data from the 2000 Census that have been merged with two community surveys, the Social Capital Benchmark Survey and the General Social Survey. We find that individuals in communities with high levels of social trust are more likely to be self-employed compared to individuals in communities with lower levels of social trust. Additionally, membership in organizations connected to the larger community is associated with higher levels of self-employment, but membership in isolated organizations that lack connections to the larger community is associated with lower levels of self-employment. Further analysis suggests that the entrepreneurship-enhancing effects of community social capital are stronger for whites, native-born residents, and long-term community members than for minorities, immigrants, and recent entrants.

Poor women with children are disproportionately represented among the food insufficient. Recent research has linked food insufficiency with dietary deficiencies, but further research linking this problem to health and mental health problems is needed to inform health and social policy. We analyzed the relationship between food insufficiency and physical and mental health in a random sample of 724 single women who were welfare recipients in February, 1997. Food insufficiency was significantly associated with poor or fair self-rated health and physical limitations, and with respondents' meeting DSM-III-R criteria for recent major depression. Although the cross-sectional design of this study precludes causal inference, these findings add to a growing body of evidence that food insufficiency is associated with serious adverse physical and mental health consequences.

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Despite decades of research, little is known about the contours of material hardship and how the social processes underlying specific domains of hardship are similar and different. We use qualitative interview data to examine five different domains of material hardship: housing, bill‐paying, food, medical, and clothing hardships. While mothers use social program participation, reliance on social networks, and individual strategies to mitigate hardships, the dominance of these strategies and their specific applications differ across hardship domains. These results complement recent research that identifies each domain of hardship as unique and suggest that domain‐specific hardship mitigation approaches are necessary.

Depression is highly prevalent in welfare recipients, and is associated with failure to move from welfare to work. This paper examines the relationship between social and environmental factors in a large, community-based sample of mothers who currently or recently received welfare benefits. Specific and modifiable risk factors related to poverty, gender, and race were found to predict major depression beyond traditional risk factors. Research and practice implications are discussed.