Research projects

The existing literature on the determinants of psychological well-being and life satisfaction has highlighted that there are critical events (such as births, deaths, job losses, among others) and social situations (such as anxiety due to labor market instability, the economic situation of the country of residence, etc.) that substantially affect subjective well-being. Most of these events or factors that are associated with subjective well-being also lead eventually to effects on health conditions. The political situation and the policies implemented in each country are likely to cause benefits or harm to certain groups of the population. For this reason, it seems reasonable to think that the psychological burden associated with the damage or gains due to government actions may affect mental health. Despite its potential relevance, there is no accessible research that has systematically assessed such issue. Taking into account this gap in the available evidence, this research project aims to analyze whether the ideological distance between citizens and their government produces an improvement or worsening of their mental health status and subjective well-being.

Such analysis will be carried out in an international context at both the European level and the United States, considering twenty countries in the analysis in total. To do so, for the former scenario, the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) will be used, which currently has suitable data for the purpose of this analysis for a longitudinal time frame between the years 2006 and 2017 on people aged 50 years old and above. In case of the United States data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (AddHealth), which contains information on more than 20,000 adolescents with longitudinal information from 1994-95 schooling year to 2018. These data will be combined with the information provided by the Parliament and Government composition database (ParlGov). Different statistical approaches will be applied to estimate the results, depending on the nature of the outcome of interest, taking advantage of having panel data for the exploitation of intra- and inter-individual variation regarding ideological proximity between the individuals and the government, after elections throughout the analyzed time frame with both datasets.