The Level of Democratic Development of States and Health across 67 Countries: A Multilevel Analysis

Patrick M. Krueger, University of Colorado at Denver
Katheryn Dovel, University of Colorado at Denver
Fred C. Pampel, University of Colorado at Boulder

Although prior research has identified an association between countries’ political functioning and the health of their populations, that research is limited by the use of data from small sets of countries or only aggregate data. We extend prior research by using multilevel data from 67 countries in the World Health Suvey, and find that the association between democratic development persists after adjusting for both individual and country level confounders. We also find that economic inequality mediates the association between democracy and population health, although investments in public health do not.