Sources of Income, Mental Health and Quality of Life in Rural Russia

This article reports on a survey examining sources of income and their effects on the mental health and subjective quality of life of residents in nine rural Russian regions. Using conventional measures of depressed mood and respondents' assessments of the quality of their lives in different domains, the authors find that the emergence of a mixed economy, that generates income from salary and wages and household enterprises, as well as government transfers, has produced differentiation in the subjective psychological as well as material quality of rural residents' lives.