Is Redistribution Good for Our Health? Examining the Macrocorrelation between Welfare Generosity and Health across EU Nations over the Last 40 Years

Abstract

Abstract Context: Social determinants of health are finally getting much-needed policy attention, but their political origins remain underexplored. In this article, the authors advance a theory of political determinants as accruing along three pathways of welfare state effects (redistribution, poverty reduction, and status preservation), and they test these assumptions by examining impacts of policy generosity on life expectancy (LE) over the last 40 years. Methods: The authors merge new and existing welfare policy generosity data from the Comparative Welfare Entitlement Project with data on LE spanning 1980–2018 across 21 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. They then examine relationships between five welfare policy generosity measures and LE using cross-sectional differencing and autoregressive lag models. Findings: The authors find consistent and positive effects for total generosity (an existing measure of social insurance generosity) on LE at birth across different model specifications in the magnitude of an increase in LE at birth of 0.10–0.15 years (p < 0.05) as well as for a measure of status preservation (0.11, p < 0.05). They find less consistent support for redistribution and poverty reduction measures. Conclusions: The authors conclude that in addition to generalized effects of policy generosity on health, status-preserving social insurance may be an important, and relatively overlooked, mechanism in increasing LE over time in advanced democracies.