How democracy alters our view of inequality - and what it means for our health

Can countries shape the association between cumulative adversity and old-age health?

Introduction

The present study examined the relationships of Lifetime Cumulative Adversity (LCA) and country inequalities, as well as the interactions between them, with the self-rated health (SRH) in old age.

Methods

Using data from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), the study regressed self-rated health on Lifetime Cumulative Adversity and country-level inequality indices across European countries in two points in time. The analysis also considered adversity-inequality interactions, controlling for confounders. The sample was comprised of 28,789 adults, aged 50 to 80, from 25 European countries and Israel.

Results

The findings pointed out that LCA is negatively associated with SRH, but democracy and welfare regimes modify the ill effects of LCA on health. These effects are reduced as the LCA level increases. The effects remained significant over two measurement time-points over three years, showing that life-course trajectories may be shaped by individual accumulated risk exposure to stress, along with inequalities at the society level.

Discussion

The study provides constructive and important guidance for decreasing the harmful effect of lifetime adversity in old age, by the modification of the country's welfare policies.

Inequality consequences of natural resources, environmental vulnerability, and monetary-fiscal stability: a global evidence

Despite making significant progress in reducing poverty over the last several decades, the world has witnessed persistent surge in global inequality. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between natural resource, environmental vulnerability, monetary-fiscal stability, and inequality in a global perspective during 2005 to 2019 for 61 countries. We distinguish between consumption and income inequality to see whether the variables under study have different implications for different measurement of inequality. The study employs Driscoll-Kraay standard error method which can account for the cross-sectional dependence between the countries. The study divides 61 countries according to the World Bank income classifications to provide evidence of heterogeneity in the sample economies. The main finding highlights that natural resources induce both consumption and income inequality whereas greenhouse gas emissions have been found to reduce the inequality of both types. Quality of government and access to electricity decrease consumption and income inequality while technological innovation and monetary-fiscal stability have incremental impacts on inequality. The coefficient of natural disaster has been shown to be positive for consumption inequality but negative and insignificant for income inequality. When analyzing moderating impacts, we find that quality of government cannot moderate the positive impact of natural resources on consumption inequality, but it can exacerbate the resources' impact on income inequality. The result for sub-sample group also differs for consumption and income inequality. The study recommends management of natural resources in a sustainable way with the help of good governance.

When do democratic transitions reduce or increase child mortality? Exploring the role of non-violent resistance

What explains variation across countries in the effect of democratization on child mortality rates? Democratic transitions, on average, improve health outcomes but there is substantial variation across countries in whether democratization leads to lower-than-expected child mortality post-transition. As yet, there is no convincing quantitative explanation for this variation. In this paper, we argue that whether you have a protest-led or violence-led democratic transition alters the trajectory of child mortality post-transition. Our paper makes two contributions. First, we offer a more detailed account of how the type of resistance movement promoting regime change affects health post-transition. We also draw on novel data to categorise the movements producing democratic transitions as violent or peaceful, moving beyond earlier work which operationalised peaceful democratizations in terms of battle-related deaths. Second, we extend earlier research by examining whether the nature of the democratization movement constitutes a necessary cause of higher or lower-than-expected child mortality following democratization. Across 51 transitions, countries that have a protest-led transition have lower-than-expected child mortality rates after the transition to democracy than countries with other kinds of movements (β = -0.17, p = 0.003). Countries with violence-led transitions, meanwhile, have, on average, higher-than-expected child mortality rates after their transition (β = 0.20, p = 0.001). These associations hold when we adjust for covariates (including all possible combinations of various confounding variables). We also find evidence that protest-led transitions may be a necessary condition for avoiding increased child mortality post-transition. Finally, we conduct a deviant case analysis of transitions that appear to be contrary to our theory, finding that these cases are likely instances of measurement error. Democratization may not always improve health, but such health improvements are more likely when regime change is protest-led. This is because such movements are more likely to build broad coalitions committed to consensual politics post-transition, a critical feature of successful democracies.

Information About Inequality of Opportunity Increases Downward Mobility Perceptions: A Population-Wide Randomized Survey Experiment

Existing evidence which is primarily based on cross-sectional and observational data suggests that perceptions of doing worse or better than parents might be more important for various life outcomes than the conventional measures of mobility based on the objective indicators of socioeconomic position. In 2021, we commissioned a nationally representative survey in Georgia which included a population-wide randomized survey experiment. We confirmed the association between, on the one hand, perceived social mobility and, on the other hand, physical and mental health, satisfaction with life, and the perceived state of affairs in the country. More importantly, the experimental design allowed us to conclude that the perception of being downwardly mobile was causally determined by a short message shared with individuals that equality of opportunity in their country was low. Those who were given information that children’s socioeconomic position was strongly linked to their parents’ socioeconomic position were seven percentage points more likely than individuals in the control group to perceive themselves as being downwardly mobile. We extrapolate these findings to the broader context and argue that the messages about (in)equality of opportunity which individuals receive in their everyday lives might also shape their perceptions of social mobility in other countries.

Social Mobility, Health and Wellbeing in Poland

Recently there has been a surge of interest in the consequences of intergenerational social mobility on individuals' health and wellbeing outcomes. However, studies on the effects of social mobility on health, using high-quality panel survey data, have almost exclusively been conducted in Western welfare democracies. To account for this gap, and using empirical data from one of the largest and most eventful post-communist countries, Poland, in this study we investigate how individuals' origin and destination socio-economic position and social mobility are linked to self-rated health and reported psychological wellbeing. We use the Polish Panel Survey (POLPAN) data to construct self-rated health and psychological wellbeing measures, origin, destination and occupational class mobility variables, and account for an extensive set of sociodemographic determinants of health. We employ diagonal reference models to distinguish social mobility effects from origin and destination effects, and account for possible health selection mechanisms. Our results suggest that there is an occupational class gradient in health in Poland and that both parental and own occupational class matter for individual health outcomes. We also find a positive reported psychological wellbeing effect for upward social mobility from the working to the professional class.