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.

尽管参与了权力关系的构建，但对健康政治经济学的研究在很大程度上忽视了作为幸福决定因素的有组织的劳动。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工会密度与心理健康之间的联系，同时考虑个人层面工会成员的构成影响来填补这一空白。我们使用欧洲社会调查的三波（N = 52,737）和传统随机效应模型的变体来估计工会对抑郁症状的背景和变化影响。我们发现国家层面的工会密度与较少的抑郁症状相关，无论工会成员如何，这都是正确的。我们根据有关健康政治经济学的文献讨论我们的发现，