University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
University of Antwerp, Antwerpen, Belgium.
J Health Soc Behav. 2020 Sep;61(3):342-358. doi: 10.1177/0022146520945047. Epub 2020 Aug 8.
Despite engagement with the construct of power relations, research on the political economy of health has largely overlooked organized labor as a determinant of well-being. Grounded in the theory of power resources, our study aims to fill this gap by investigating the link between country-level union density and mental health while accounting for the compositional effects of individual-level union membership. We use three waves of the European Social Survey (N = 52,737) and a variation on traditional random-effects models to estimate both the contextual and change effects of labor unions on depressive symptoms. We find that country-level union density is associated with fewer depressive symptoms and that this is true irrespective of union membership. We discuss our findings vis-à-vis the literatures on the political economy of health, power resources, and fundamental causes of disease.
尽管涉及权力关系的结构，但健康的政治经济学研究在很大程度上忽略了有组织的劳动力作为福祉的决定因素。我们的研究以权力资源理论为基础，旨在通过调查国家层面的工会密度与心理健康之间的联系来填补这一空白，同时考虑到个体层面的工会成员资格的构成效应。我们使用了三波欧洲社会调查（N=52737）和传统随机效应模型的变体来估计工会对抑郁症状的影响既有上下文效应又有变化效应。我们发现，国家层面的工会密度与较少的抑郁症状有关，而且无论是否有工会成员资格，这都是事实。我们根据健康的政治经济学、权力资源和疾病的根本原因的文献来讨论我们的发现。
