ABSTRACT
This chapter conducts a comparative study of health effects on political participation. It examines health gaps in political participation based on comparative survey data. The chapter analyses different modes of participation to identify patterns in terms of how participation gaps between citizens with poor and good health differ across countries. It explains the varying influence of health on turnout. Turnout inequality between social groups will arguably increase as the costs of voting increase and as politicians' incentives to turn out the vote decrease. The chapter focuses on the role of contextual factors, such as compulsory voting, type of electoral system, share of left-wing parties and trade union density. To quantify participation gaps between health groups, regression models are run separately for each country and political participation indicator. The regression coefficients will tell us, for each country, the strength of the effect of health on political participation.
