The influence of various measures of health on different types of political participation

Abstract

Recent research in political behaviour suggests that poor health can be an impediment for individuals to vote. At the same time, researchers argue that health may both hinder and reinforce other forms of political participation. With respect to these ambiguous expectations, our study asks: does the relationship between health and political involvement depend on how we measure health? We answer this question for two of the most widely used health indicators, self-reported health and being hampered by illness in daily activities. We use the European Social Survey (ESS) (N = 35,000) covering 20 European countries and find that the measurement of health indeed matters: our results illustrate that bad self-reported health is an impediment to voting, but not to other forms of political activity. When it comes to our second indicator, being hampered in daily activities, we also find a negative relationship with voting. Yet, our results also indicate that most individuals, who are hampered by illness in their daily lives, have a tendency to participate more regularly in most other forms of political activity, including boycotting, contacting a politician, or signing a petition. Robustness checks including waves 1–6 of the ESS support these findings.