Income and Psychological Distress: The Impact of an Income-Maintenance Experiment

distress relative to the distress levels of controls. The life events hypothesis suggests that the readjustments following from a change in income will raise the psychological distress levels of experimental subjects relative to those of controls. Several race, sex, and marital status groups respond to the income-maintenance treatments with significantly increased distress (as measured by a version of the Macmillan Health Opinion Survey index). These results are consistent with the life-events hypothesis. Directions forfurther research and the policy implications of the results are briefly discussed.