Does exposure to democracy decrease health inequality?

Joan Costa-Font and Niklas Knust

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Exposure to (a liberal) democracy can have an impact on both the political attention and visibility of the needs of marginalized populations, as well as the design of health policies that can influence the distribution of population health. This paper investigates the effect of exposure to democracy, that is, the number of years spent in a democracy as measured by democracy indexes, on various measures of inequality in self-reported health across European countries. We use an instrumental variable strategy to leverage the potential endogeneity of a country's exposure to democracy, drawing on both bivariate (socioeconomic) and univariate health inequality measures. Our estimates provide evidence that an additional year in a democracy reduces both bivariate (income-related) health inequality and overall (univariate) health inequality. Our preferred specification suggests a two-point rank reduction in inequality with an additional year under a democracy. The effect is mainly driven by a reduction of "health poverty"alongside other effects.

Keywords: health inequality; income-related health inequality; Europe; democracy; institutions; health poverty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2023-12-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ltv, nep-mfd and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Journal of Public Policy, 1, December, 2023, 43(4), pp. 741 - 760. ISSN: 0143-814X

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:119444

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