Regina Jutz

The role of income inequality and social policies on income-related health inequalities in Europe.

IntroductionThe aim of the paper is to examine the role of income inequality and redistribution for income-related health inequalities in Europe. This paper contributes in two ways to the literature on macro determinants of socio-economic inequalities in health. First, it widens the distinctive focus of the research field on welfare state regimes to quantifiable measures such as social policy indicators. Second, looking at income differences completes studies on socio-economic health inequalities, which often analyse health inequalities based on educational differences.MethodsUsing data from the European Values Study (2008/2009), 42 European countries are available for analysis. Country characteristics are derived from SWIID, Eurostat, and ILO and include indicators for income inequality, social policies, and economic performance. The data is analysed by using a two-step hierarchical estimation approach: At the first step—the individual level—the effect of household income on self-assessed health is extracted and introduced as an indicator measuring income-related health inequalities at the second step, the country-level.ResultsIndividual-level analyses reveal that income-related health inequalities exist all across Europe. Results from country-level analyses show that higher income inequality is significantly positively related to higher health inequalities while social policies do not show significant relations. Nevertheless, the results show the expected negative association between social policies and health inequalities. Economic performance also has a reducing influence on health inequalities. In all models, income inequality was the dominating explanatory effect for health inequalities.ConclusionsThe analyses indicate that income inequality has more impact on health inequalities than social policies. On the contrary, social policies seemed to matter to all individuals regardless of socio-economic position since it is significantly positively linked to overall population health. Even though social policies are not significantly related to health inequalities, the power of public redistribution to impact health inequalities should not be downplayed. Social policies as a way of public redistribution are a possible instrument to reduce income inequalities which would in turn lead to a reduction in health inequalities.

ISSP and the ISSP 2014 Citizenship II Module: An Introduction

This introduction provides an overview of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) and the data that has been collected by this group. Its main focus, however, is on the Citizenship module, which was published by GESIS in mid-2016. This survey includes questions on citizen rights and duties, political efficacy and interest, as well as about the political system of the respondents’ country. Details of the fieldwork, such as participating countries, sample size, sampling mode, etc. are reported, whereas first descriptive findings are shown in a separate contribution.

The ISSP 2015 Work Orientations IV Module

This special issue introduces the 2015 Work Orientations survey of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). This survey is the fourth module on Work Orientations—with previous waves fielded in 1989, 1997, and 2005. In general, the Work Orientations modules include attitudes toward work and private life, as well as respondents’ work organization and working conditions. The special issue includes an introduction summarizing the history and the content of this ISSP survey, a research note reporting descriptive results at the country level, and articles analyzing various waves of the ISSP data on Work Orientations.