Political Regimes, Political Ideology, and Self-Rated Health in Europe: A Multilevel Analysis

Tim Huijts*, Jessica M. Perkins, S. V. Subramanian

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Studies on political ideology and health have found associations between individual ideology and health as well as between ecological measures of political ideology and health. Individual ideology and aggregate measures such as political regimes, however, were never examined simultaneously.Using adjusted logistic multilevel models to analyze data on individuals from 29 European countries and Israel, we found that individual ideology and political regime are independently associated with self-rated health. Individuals with rightwing ideologies report better health than leftwing individuals. Respondents from Eastern Europe and former Soviet republics report poorer health than individuals from social democratic, liberal, Christian conservative, and former Mediterranean dictatorship countries. In contrast to individual ideology and political regimes, country level aggregations of individual ideology are not related to reporting poor health.This study shows that although both individual political ideology and contextual political regime are independently associated with individuals' self-rated health, individual political ideology appears to be more strongly associated with self-rated health than political regime.
Original languageEnglish
Article number11711
Number of pages5
JournalPLOS ONE
Volume5
Issue number7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 22 Jul 2010
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • INEQUALITIES

Cite this