How Different Forms of Health Matter to Political Participation

Physical and mental health is known to have wide influence over most aspects of social life-be it schooling and employment or marriage and broader social engagement-but it has received limited attention in explaining different forms of political participation. We analyze a unique data set with a rich array of objective measures of cognitive and physical well-being and two objective measures of political participation: voting and contributing money to campaigns and parties. For voting, each aspect of health has a powerful effect on par with traditional predictors of participation such as education. In contrast, health has little to no effect on making campaign contributions. We recommend additional attention to the multifaceted effects of health on different forms of political participation.