In search of a better understanding of inequalities in citizen political engagement, scholars have begun addressing the relationship between personal health and patterns of political behavior. This study focuses on the impact of personal health on various forms of political participation. The analysis contributes to existing knowledge by examining a number of different participation forms beyond just voting. Using European Social Survey data from 2012/2013 for Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden ($N=8\text{,}060$), self-reported turnout and six alternative modes of political engagement were modeled as dependent variables. Contrary to expectations, poor health did not depress participation across all forms. As assumed by the increased activism hypothesis, all else equal, people with poor health were more active than their healthy counterparts in direct contacts with power holders and demonstrations. The results reveal a “reversed health gap” by showing that people with health problems are in fact more politically active than what previous research, which has focused on voting, has suggested. Although the magnitude of the gap should not be overdramatized, our results stress the importance of distinguishing between different forms of participation when analyzing the impact of health on political engagement. Nevertheless, the findings show that poor health can stimulate people into political engagement rather than depressing activity. This finding holds when the effects of several sociodemographic and motivational factors are controlled for.

Taking a life-cycle approach to marital power relations, the paper compares the attitudes of married men close to retirement with those who are retired. An integrative model based on Resource Theory was designed to analyse the effect of several variables on the husband's perceptions of power relations: perceived resources, attitudes toward gender roles, emotional commitment to his wife and anticipated dependence on her. The model was tested on a sample of 348 Israeli men – 137 pre-retired and 211 retirees. Contrary to expectations of a decline in the retired husband's perceived power, no differences were found between the two groups except for a reported increase in social power among the older group. Major differences were found, however, regarding the overall impact of variables: perceived economic resources had the strongest explanatory power for pre-retired respondents, whereas it was psycho-social factors (anticipated dependence on the wife for satisfaction of emotional needs, psychological resources, and emotional commitment to the wife) that best explained variance among retirees. The increased dependence of retired husbands on their wives' expressive resources seems to contradict their reports of greater social power, suggesting that their perceptions of marital power relations may be coloured by feelings of status anxiety.