Why is income volatility bad for physical and mental health? osf.io/preprints/so...

In this paper that having an income that goes up and down from month to month is as strongly associated with poor health as having a low income is.

Part of this is predictable: because of the non-linearity of the income-health association, a given down-fluctuation is always going to be worse than a given up-fluctuation is good

But we show that the effect is several fold too strong for this to be the whole story.

We suggest that fluctuation brings uncertainty: and uncertainty is stressful and threatening.