During the last decade a number of studies have been published that investigate how the most fundamental aspect of political organization, the regime type, affects population health. The results unanimously show that citizens of democracies live longer and healthier lives than citizens of non-democracies. Many explanations for this have been suggested, among these are that democracies redistribute more and invest more in salutogenic resources, and that the tendency of dictatorships to control the media negatively affects the ability to spread information crucial to public health. When these mechanisms are controlled for, however, it turns out that democracy has a large residual correlation with for example life expectancy, which suggests that other mechanisms are also involved. In this paper two new mechanisms regarding the possible psychosocially mediated health effects of the regime type are investigated, namely political repression, and the possible negative effects this might have on the levels of chronic stress, and autonomy, which connects to a large previous literature in social epidemiology. In the paper an ecological cross-country design is used and country-level data, provided mainly by the World Bank and Freedom House, is analyzed with a simple multiple OLS-regression model. The results show that that all residual correlation is captured by autonomy, while there is no evidence for political repression as a mediating factor. This could suggest that the feeling of personal autonomy that democracies can fulfill is an equally important factor to take into account as distribution of resources and access to information.

Det senaste decenniet har en rad studier publicerats som undersöker hur ett lands mest fundamentala politiska organisationssätt, regimtypen, påverkar befolkningens hälsa. Resultaten pekar entydigt på att invånare i demokratier lever längre och friskare liv än invånare i icke-demokratier. Flera förklaringar till detta har förts fram, bland annat att demokratier omfördelar mer och är bättre på att investera i hälsofrämjande resurser, och att diktaturers tendens att kontrollera media går ut över förmågan att sprida hälsofrämjande information. När dessa mekanismer kontrolleras för visar det sig dock att demokrati har en stor kvarvarande samvariation med exempelvis medellivslängden, vilket talar för att andra mekanismer också är inblandade.I denna uppsats undersöks två ytterligare mekanismer som berör de eventuella psykosocialt medierade hälsoeffekter som regimtypen kan ha, nämligen via politisk repression, och de negativa effekter på kronisk stress detta kan tänkas ha, samt autonomi, vilket ansluter till en omfattande tidigare socialepidemiologisk litteratur. I uppsatsen används en ekologisk tvärsnittsdesign och landnivådata, huvudsakligen från Världsbanken och Freedom House, analyseras med enkel multipel OLS-regression. Resultaten visar att all kvarvarande samvariation fångas upp av faktorn autonomi, medan politisk repression inte får något stöd som medierande faktor. Detta kan tyda på att den känsla av personlig autonomi som demokratier kan tillgodose är en minst lika viktig faktor att ta i beaktande som fördelning av resurser och tillgång till information. / During the last decade a number of studies have been published that investigate how the most fundamental aspect of political organization, the regime type, affects population health. The results unanimously show that citizens of democracies live longer and healthier lives than citizens of non-democracies. Many explanations for this have been suggested, among these are that democracies redistribute more and invest more in salutogenic resources, and that the tendency of dictatorships to control the media negatively affects the ability to spread information crucial to public health. When these mechanisms are controlled for, however, it turns out that democracy has a large residual correlation with for example life expectancy, which suggests that other mechanisms are also involved.In this paper two new mechanisms regarding the possible psychosocially mediated health effects of the regime type are investigated, namely political repression, and the possible negative effects this might have on the levels of chronic stress, and autonomy, which connects to a large previous literature in social epidemiology. In the paper an ecological cross-country design is used and country-level data, provided mainly by the World Bank and Freedom House, is analyzed with a simple multiple OLS-regression model. The results show that that all residual correlation is captured by autonomy, while there is no evidence for political repression as a mediating factor. This could suggest that the feeling of personal autonomy that democracies can fulfill is an equally important factor to take into account as distribution of resources and access to information.

This is a statistical analysis where various factors related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been used to explain life expectancy. The dataset contained information on how countries perform in different aspects over several years. The factors used have been considered to be well-linked to one or more of the SDGs by studying how the United Nations (UN) and Globalis have categorized them under different goals. After the dataset was investigated and measures were implemented, a multiple regression analysis was performed. The analysis showed which factors had statistically significant effects on life expectancy for the observations that were used. From this information, the final linear regression model could be obtained. Then it was discussed whether important information was omitted from the final model and another regression analysis was performed. This time, the dataset was divided into smaller subgroups where one group contained all observations where life expectancy was 75 years or more and the other data set contained all observations where life expectancy was 56 years or less. From these datasets, it was analyzed whether significant factors change depending on the associated life expectancy, which was proved to be the case. The conclusion that was drawn was therefore that the final model is a weighting of observations with different life expectancy, but the differences between observations with different life expectancies are omitted. / Det här är en statistisk analys där olika faktorer med koppling till de Globala Hållbarhetsmålen har används för att förklara den förväntade livslängden. Datasetet som användes innehöll information om hur länder presterar i olika avseenden under flera olika år. De faktorer som används har ansetts ha god koppling till något av de globala hållbarhetsmålen genom att studera hur FN samt Globalis har kategoriserat olika index under de respektive målen. Efter att datasetet undersökts och eventuella åtgärder genomförts så gjordes en multipel linjär regressionsanalys. Analysen visade vilka faktorer som hade signifikant påverkan på förväntad livslängd hos de observationer som använts. Ur denna information kunde den slutgiltiga linjära regressionsmodellen tas fram. Sedan skedde ett resonemang kring validiteten av denna modell och huruvida viktigt information utelämnas i den slutgiltiga modellen. Då genomfördes ytterligare en regressionsanalys, men denna gång hade datasetet delats upp i mindre grupper. En grupp innehöll alla observationer då den förväntade livslängden var 75 år eller mer, och den andra gruppen innehöll alla observationer då förväntad livslängd var 56 år eller mindre. Med hjälp av dessa dataset utreddes huruvida olika faktorer är olika viktiga vid olika förväntade livslängder, vilket var fallet. Slutsatsen som drogs var därför att den slutgiltiga modellen som togs fram var en sammanvägning av alla observationer med olika förväntade livslängder, men där skillnaderna mellan länder utelämnades.