Chronic illness, poor health, the electorate and mass politics in the United States and United Kingdom

Dealing with chronic illness is part of daily life for tens of millions of Americans, affecting how they function at home, school, and the workplace. It makes sense those effects also may be seen in the political arena (CDC 2017). Specific chronic illness has rarely received attention, and this suggests that political scientists’ models of political behavior may suffer from a huge oversight. This oversight could have major consequences for our understanding of public opinion and citizen engagement. The central premise advanced in this dissertation holds that chronic health issues and poor health are consequential for citizens’ political attitudes and actions. Through systematic attention to the individual differences of chronic illness and health status, I contend that we can gain considerable new insight about the underpinnings of virtually all aspects of mass political behavior. My goal in this dissertation is to show this point both analytically and empirically. The main questions I examine concern chronic illness, poor health and their influence on mass politics. For example, how do chronic health issues such as diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, cancer, and asthma change engagement with politics and is that manifested in the political results? Do people with chronic illnesses or poor overall health also have different ideological orientations and policy beliefs than those that are not diagnosed with a health condition? Results reveal that in the UK data set being diagnosed with diabetes or arthritis was associated with a decrease in political interest and feeling politically informed. Having diabetes or hypertension also was associated with feeling like they had less of a say in government. Hypertension also was associated with a feeling that the government doesn’t care about people like them. In terms of voting, having epilepsy or asthma also was linked to a decline in voter turnout. In all, 5 different chronic illnesses produced significant results. Self-rated health also produced many significant results in both the US and UK context. For example, lower SRH was connected to feeling like there was no say, less reading of the paper, and support for protecting and improving the nation’s health (GSS). SRH in the UK, showed that poor health led to decreases in interest, informed, feeling the government doesn’t care, support for liberal parties, and voter turnout.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Political Science

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2023

Author dc:creator

• Pryor, Matthew Robert

Contributors dc:contributor

• Mondak, Jeffrey
• Canache, Damrys
• Ksiazkiewicz, Aleks
• Rudolph, Thomas

• Chronic Illness
• Health Politics
• Political Psycholgy

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2023 Matthew Pryor

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/122009

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F122009