Department of Social and Political Science and Dondena Centre for Research on Social Dynamics and Public Policy, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy.
Department of Sociology, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland.
Demography. 2018 Oct;55(5):1905-1934. doi: 10.1007/s13524-018-0697-0.
There is considerable speculation that female political empowerment could improve population health. Yet, evidence to date is limited, and explanations for why political empowerment would matter and the conditions under which this might be enhanced or muted are not well understood. In this article, we draw on theoretical work on the politics of representation to frame an investigation of whether increases in the percentage of females in a country's parliament influence mortality rates. We further examine whether the relationship is conditioned by extent of democracy and economic and social development. Through multivariate longitudinal regression, we analyze four indicators of mortality in 155 countries spanning 1990 to 2014 with controls for initial country conditions, time-stable structural predispositions to higher mortality, and a number of time-varying potential confounders. Results indicate that a high level of female representation-30 % or greater in our models-has large negative associations with mortality, that these are particularly strong in lesser developed and weak democratic contexts, that high female political representation effectively offsets liabilities associated with low development, and that the relationships are robust to various operationalizations of social development. In the end, our research provides a particularly thorough accounting of the relationship between female political representation and population health, particularly by specifying the conditions under which female representation is most salient. In doing so, the research suggests important links between issues of female empowerment, political context, and developmental trajectories of countries more generally.
人们普遍推测，赋予女性政治权力可以改善人口健康状况。然而，迄今为止，相关证据有限，而且对于为什么赋予女性政治权力很重要以及在什么条件下可以增强或减弱这种作用的解释还不太清楚。在本文中，我们借鉴关于代表性政治的理论工作，来阐述对以下问题的研究：一国议会中女性比例的增加是否会影响死亡率。我们还进一步探讨了这种关系是否受到民主程度和经济社会发展程度的影响。我们通过多元纵向回归分析，对 1990 年至 2014 年期间 155 个国家的四种死亡率指标进行了分析，这些国家的初始国情、更高死亡率的稳定结构性倾向以及许多时变潜在混杂因素都得到了控制。结果表明，女性代表比例高（我们的模型中为 30%或更高）与死亡率呈负相关，在欠发达和民主程度较弱的情况下，这种相关性尤其强烈，高女性政治代表比例有效地抵消了与发展水平低相关的不利因素，而且这些关系在各种社会发展的操作化定义下都是稳健的。最终，我们的研究对女性政治代表与人口健康之间的关系进行了特别彻底的解释，特别是通过明确了女性代表最突出的条件。通过这样做，该研究表明了女性赋权、政治背景和国家发展轨迹等问题之间的重要联系。
