Definition
A theoretical framework to understand how poverty, over time, contributes to disparities in health outcomes, focusing on the mechanisms of high stress, low reserves, and negative emotions.
Introduction
The Reserve Capacity Model (RCM) is a framework suggested by Gallo and Matthews (2003) to understand the mechanisms that underlie the well-established relationship between poverty/low socioeconomic status (SES) and poor health. The theory suggests that stress depletes the resources from which people can draw in times of need, and that over time low reserves elicit the experience of negative emotions. In turn, negative emotions affect physical health outcomes through poor health habits and chronic physiological arousal.
What Is the RCM?
The RCM proposes that people living with low SES experience more daily hassles and major life stressors than their middle and high SES counterparts. And, they have fewer...
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References
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Bennett, K. (2017). Reserve Capacity Model. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1154-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1154-1
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