Democracy and self-rated health across 67 countries: A multilevel analysis

Patrick M. Krueger, Kathryn Dovel and Justin T. Denney

Social Science & Medicine, 2015, vol. 143, issue C, 137-144

Abstract: Existing research has found a positive association between countries' level of democratic governance and the health of their populations, although that research is limited by the use of data from small numbers of high-income countries or aggregate data that do not assess individual-level health outcomes. We extend prior research by using multilevel World Health Survey (2002–2004) data on 313,554 individuals in 67 countries, and find that the positive association between democratic governance and self-rated health persists after adjusting for both individual- and country-level confounders. However, the mechanisms linking democracy and self-rated health remain unclear. Individual-level measures of socioeconomic status, and country-level measures of economic inequality and investments in public health and education, do not significantly mediate the association between democratic governance and self-rated health. The persistent association between democratic governance and health suggests that the political organization of societies may be an important upstream determinant of population health.

Keywords: World health survey; Global health; Democracy; Political epidemiology; Corruption; Self-rated health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:143:y:2015:i:c:p:137-144

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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.08.047

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