What a man can be, he must be : En kvantitativ studie i postmateriella värderingars påverkan på psykisk ohälsa i olika välfärdsstatsregimer

Sammanfattning: In an economically developing world, the process of modernization has been proven to change people’s cultural and political values. Political scientists Ronald Inglehart and Christian Wetzel’s revised theory of modernization shows evidence that people’s political and cultural values move along two dimensions in a predictable pattern. Economic development shift people’s values from traditional and survival toward more secular-rational and self- expressive. This rise in post-material values has unknown effects on people’s mental health. Using Esping-Andersen’s theory on welfare state regimes the aim of this study is to both examine what effect post-material values have on mental health and, furthermore, if this effect plays out differently in different welfare state regimes. This was done using regression analysis based on data from a large number of countries from all over the world. The results of the analysis show that a rise in post-material values is positively correlated with worse mental health. But when welfare state regimes were brought into the model the relationship between post-material values and mental health did not stay the same but varied in its effect across the different regimes. The conservative welfare state regime stood out as the regime in which post-material values generated the worst mental health. On the whole, results indicate that the relationship between post-material values, welfare state regimes and mental health is a very complex relationship that is in need of further examination.