Abstract
Health affects nearly all facets of our lives, including the likelihood of getting involved in politics. Focusing on political efficacy, we zoom in on one potential mechanism as to why people in poor health might, for example, stay at home on Election Day. We first look at the ways in which health is related to both people’s perceptions of their abilities to take part in politics (internal political efficacy) as well as the extent to which they believe policymakers are responsive to citizen needs (external political efficacy). Second, we examine how the social policy context intervenes in the relationship between health and political efficacy. Multilevel models using 2014 and 2016 European Social Survey data on roughly 57,000 respondents nested in 21 European countries reveal complex results: while good health, rather unsurprisingly, fosters internal and external political efficacy, more generous welfare states, though associated with higher levels of political efficacy, are not a panacea for remedying political inequalities stemming from individual health differences.
Highlights
Health affects most facets of our lives
Our analyses, based on multilevel models including cross-level interactions, reveal complex results: While good health, rather unsurprisingly, fosters internal and external political efficacy, we find that more generous welfare states, though associated with higher overall levels of political efficacy, are not a panacea for remedying political inequalities stemming from individual health differences
The estimation of the intraclass correlation revealed that 13 percent of the variance in external political efficacy is due to differences between countries and roughly 6.6 percent of the variance in internal efficacy could be explained by country differences
Summary
Health affects most facets of our lives. Health status, both physical and mental, can impact the ability to work and personal relationships. Both physical and mental, can impact the ability to work and personal relationships It can influence the types of decisions we make and the attitudes we adopt. Poor physical or mental health may limit one’s resources, such as education or International Journal of Comparative Sociology 60(6). The relationship between health and political involvement has recently received increased attention (Denny and Doyle, 2007a, 2007b; Gollust and Rahn, 2015; Mattila et al, 2013; Pacheco and Fletcher, 2015; Reher, 2018; Söderlund and Rapeli, 2015; Wass et al, 2017). For example, reduce the likelihood of voting in an election by up to 10 percentage points (Mattila et al, 2013; Schur and Kruse, 2000)
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