The health effects of wage setting institutions: how collective bargaining improves health but not because it reduces inequality

Aaron Reeves

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Do wage-setting institutions, such as collective bargaining, improve health and, if so, is this because they reduce income inequality? Wage-setting institutions are often assumed to improve health because they increase earnings and reduce inequality and yet, while individual-level studies suggest higher earnings improve well being, the direct effects of these institutions on mortality remains unclear. This paper explores both the relationship between wage-setting institutions and mortality rates whether income inequality mediates this relationship. Using 50 years of data from 22 high-income countries (n ~ 825), I find mortality rates are lower in countries with collective bargaining compared to places with little or no wage protection. While wage-setting institutions may reduce economic inequality, these institutions do not appear to improve health because they reduce inequality. Instead, collective bargaining improves health, in part, because they increase average wage growth. The political and economic drivers of inequality may not, then, be correlated with health outcomes, and, as a result, health scholars need to develop more nuanced theories of the political economy of health that are separate from but in dialogue with the political economy of inequality.

Keywords: collective bargaining; infant mortality; life expectancy; minimum wage; mortality rates; Wellcome Trust (Grant Number 220206/Z/20/Z) and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (Grant Number 1503002). (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2021-05-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Sociology of Health and Illness, 1, May, 2021, 43(4), pp. 1012 - 1031. ISSN: 0141-9889

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/113422/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:113422

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().