Annotated Bibliography

The effects of materialism on children and adolescents in lower-income families

Alexis Vasquez-Morgan
Professor Malcolm Campbell
UWRT 1103
October 24, 2016

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Alexis Vasquez-Morgan
Professor Campbell
UWRT 1103
October 24, 2016
Annotated Bibliography

Carney, Jack. "Poverty & Mental Illness: You Can't Have One Without the Other." Mad In
America. MIA Foundation, 07 Mar. 2012. Web. 17 Oct. 2016.
Being poor and being mentally ill seem to go hand in hand according to various sources
including the Census Bureau, which tells us that in 2010 4.1 million people between 18 and 64
reported a disability and also lived below the poverty line. An additional 10.9 million people
claimed disability, but did not report living below the poverty line. While it is unknown whether
or not these disabilities are mental illnesses, the National Institute of Mental Health declares that
in 2008, 5 percent of the American population was mentally ill. With a 2008 US population of
304.1 million, that equals to be approximately 15 million with serious mental illness. One issue
with those statistics, however, is the possibility that the self-reporting of mental illness is not an
accurate reflection of the actual situation.
To understand further the connection between poverty and mental illness, the article
includes statistics from the Department of Health and Human Services, which says that the
poverty line for a single person in 2011 was $10,890. In January of 2012, the 8.1 million people
eligible for Supplemental Security Income due to disability would only receive an average
annual income of $8,064. This is almost $3,000 below the poverty line. 34 percent (2.7 million)

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of the eligible have been diagnosed with serious mental illness, according to the Office of
Retirement and Disability Policy of the Social Security Administration.
Information presented in the article shows that mental illness and poverty directly
correlate, but mental illness was not the overwhelming cause of poverty like once thought. M.
Harvey Brenner of Harvard University showed in a 1973 study that unemployment was a cause
of mental illness. The data is now historical, but it set a precedent for Christopher Hudsons 2005
research that shows mental illness is a result of poverty and economic hardship and not the other
way around. His studies revealed that increased economic hardship within a community led to
increased mental illness and psychiatric hospitalization, and in conclusion noticed a remarkably
strong and consistent negative correlation between socio-economic conditions and mental illness,
one that supports the role of social causation in mental illness and cannot be accounted for by
geographic or economic downward mobility
This article was written by a Doctor of Social Welfare for a Mad In America Foundation
website, and the sources used to support the ideas are reliable and academic, and come from
researchers at universities and government statistics, making this source reliable. It will be
included within my essay because it supports the idea that mental illness stems from poverty, and
although detailed connections between mental illness and poverty are not made, it can be
inferred through continued academic research that heightened materialism may be an effect of it.
In fact, this idea is supported in a later source.

"Economic Status and Abuse | Dual Diagnosis." Dual Diagnosis. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2016.
This webpage on DualDiagnosis.org outlines links between economic status and reasons
for substance abuse, including education, abuse and neglect, genetics, mental health, race,

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parental abuse, and poverty versus wealth. The overarching theme is that those in poverty show a
higher likelihood of substance abuse due to heightened rates of mental illness, neglect, and
parental drug abuse, and a decrease in education.
Under the Education heading, the first sentence says that those with higher educations are
less likely to be abusers, and then gives survey evidence and the source link. Exploring this
source provides less-than-ideal discoveries, however. Despite the webpage being published in
2015, the supporting source is an article published in 1987, which seems to have a bias against
the poor and lacks insight as to why the drug epidemics it mentions occurred. It mentions a spike
in cocaine addiction in the late 1800s while failing to realize the widespread medical use of
cocaine in the 1880s, and points fingers at low-income communities for having a continuing
crack cocaine epidemic, which is likely caused by potentially government-sanctioned crack
cocaine distribution to those specific areas in the 1980s. While the rest of the sources are recent
and provide further insight into the causes of substance abuse, the information under the
Education heading is likely not fresh enough to be accurate.
Other sources, however, led to insightful discoveries that allowed for an expansion of my
thoughts and eventually, EIP topic. Under Mental Illness, it is said that 29 percent of Americans
with mental illness also have a substance abuse issue, and severe mental illness is most common
among Americans with a household income of less than $20,000 per year. This directly opposes
my original claim that the rich are more likely to have issues in relation to materialism, and
therefore abuse drugs more often. It does, however, show that perhaps rich Americans are not the
most materialistic, and do not feel the stresses of advertisement envy along with the obvious
stresses caused by living with very little money. This new insight led to a revision of my topic to
focus on the culture of the impoverished, and will be included in my essay. This entire source

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provides information on an essential part of societys perception of the impoverished: drug and
alcohol abuse.

Mulligan, Michael. "The Three Most Important Questions You Can Ask Your Teenager." The
Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 20 Jan. 2015. Web. 17 Oct. 2016.
While we read this article for class in a different context, the part of the source that I plan
to use can be summarized as such:
According to Yale professor William Deresiewicz and Stanford Provost John Etchemendy,
college students are showing increasingly disturbing levels of depression, anxiety, fear, and
suicidal and self-mutilating behavior as a result of the pressures faced by college education and
the desire to achieve above their peers. They want to stand out, and as a result, lose the positive
meaning of hard work and learning in of itself. It is all about outcomes, and final pictures.
Sports, community service, and challenging classes are not activities chosen to achieve selfbetterment, but to be better than anyone else. This pressure leads to increases in the deleterious
behaviors and emotions described above.
This source is an admittedly semi-popular-culture online newspaper, but includes individual
supporting sources from the Stanford Provost, a Yale professor, and a published author. The
author is also a college graduate and is head of The Thacher School in Ojai, California. It is
reliable, and will be included in my essay because it directly supports that pressure (whether
materialistic or academic) leads to dangerous behavior and mental states.

Nguyen Chaplin, Lan, Ronald Paul Hill, and Deborah Roedder John. "Poverty and Materialism:

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A Look at Impoverished Versus Affluent Children."ResearchGate. Journal of Public
Policy & Marketing, Mar. 2014. Web. 17 Oct. 2016.
This article, published in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, for the American Marketing
Association, was collaborated on by Lan Nguyen Chaplin of the University of Illinois at
Chicago, Ronald Paul Hill of Villanova University, and Deborah Roedder John of the University
of Minnesota Twin Cities. Along with being entered into a journal, the article utilizes reliable
sources, and addresses gray areas and potential gaps in research in order to remain as objective
and transparent as possible. Everything is up-to-date and likely very accurate.
Summarized, the article is about materialism becoming a public policy issue with more and more
children being affected negatively by marketing. Adolescents from low-income families
displayed the most significant levels of low self-esteem, increased mental illness, and increased
substance abuse as a result of exposure, while also experiencing the various stressors of lowerincome life. Children who experienced colder family relationships and parental divorce were
also at increased risk of materialism, especially when the parent made up for lost time through
material gifts. The effects of wanting to fit in only worsen as the children age through
adolescence with the addition of cars, a wider array of brands, and the increase in wanting to
impress those around them. This is especially apparent in teens of lower-income families because
the desire to fit in through material possession is less easily achieved.
This journal article will be included in my final paper because it is heavily detailed about all
major topics of my paper (materialism, social classes, unhappiness, mental illness, substance
abuse). It is reliable and thorough, and has helped me to get a bearing on a topic that can easily
waver due to its broad reach. Like the DualDiagnosis website, it allowed me to narrow my focus
to one social class. As I continue to read the lengthy document, I anticipate gaining further

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insight on the effects of materialism on children and adolescents as a result of media influence,
and connecting it to ideas presented in my Intro to Sociology class.