Why are Depressive Symptoms More Prevalent Among The Less Educated? The Relevance of Low Cultural Capital and Cultural Entitlement

Abstract

Analyzing nationally representative survey data collected in the United States in 2014 (n ¼ 1,932), we formulate and test a novel explanation for the educational gradient in depressive symptoms. We theorize that status as cultural capital drives this gradient in addition to well-established economic and social factors, via the feelings of cultural entitlement it inspires. Therefore, we use structural equation modeling to decompose the education effect. We demonstrate that in addition to economic (job security and income) and social factors (embeddedness in the neighborhood), cultural capital indeed accounts for the educational gradient in depressive symptoms via cultural entitlement. We conclude that for understanding social gradients in mental health it is vital to be sensitive for the cultural mechanisms that status as cultural capital can inspire. Based on our findings we propose suggestions for further research.

Partner Politics: How Partners Are Relevant to Voting

“…Specifically, we found that citizens whose level of education is lower than that of their partner are less likely to vote than people who have the same level of education but who are in an educationally homogamous relationship. This is consistent with literature that stresses the importance of a sense of entitlement (Bourdieu, ; Laurison, ; Spruyt et al, ; Ten Kate et al, ). It is likely that people who are confronted with a higher educated partner on a daily basis consider themselves to be less entitled and less qualified to hold and express political opinions, which underlies a lower likelihood to vote.…”

“…Tellingly, a recent experimental study demonstrates that less‐educated respondents are less inclined to participate politically if they are confronted with the higher rates of political participation of more‐educated citizens (Spruyt, Kuppens, Spears, & Van Noord, ). This indicates that a higher level of education fuels a greater “sense of being a relevant and legitimate citizen who matters in society” and that it generates a sense of entitlement to participate politically (Ten Kate, De Koster, & Van der Waal, , p. 64; cf. Lamont, Beljean, & Clair, ; Laurison, ).…”

The Educational Gradient in Trust in Politicians in the Netherlands: A Status-Based Cultural Conflict

“…On the one hand, this seems to be at odds with the current mocking of cultural elites, which was less prominent during Bourdieu's study of France in the 1960s and 1970s. On the other hand, those with a low affinity with elite culture still feel less entitled to state an opinion in political matters (Myles 2008;Ten Kate, De Koster, and Van der Waal 2017). As a result, determining which aspects of superiority signaling are accepted as legitimate, and which inspire outright hostile rejection, is an empirical question (cf., Spruyt and Kuppens 2015a).…”

Associations among health behaviors, body mass index, hypertension, and diabetes mellitus

“…Path analysis was conducted using generalized structural equation modeling (GSEM) of STATA 13.1 to analyze the types of binary variables and logit links. [24] However, despite its advantage, GSEM has the disadvantage of not being able to show indirect effects and goodness-of-fit indicators between variables. [24] To overcome this weakness, we used the “nlcom” command to directly calculate the indirect effect between health behavior and dependent variables.…”