查看文章

Health is not only a result of biological conditions, but of psychological, economic, and social circumstances. Both proximal factors, which impact daily life, and distal factors, which are further removed from everyday life, can influence a person's wellbeing. However, traditionally these distal factors have been overlooked in public discourse and government policy.

In the present study we examined whether measures of country-level safety predict the health of their residents. Additionally, we examined whether socioeconomic status (SES; approximated by income) interacts with other proximal factors to predict health.

Participants were 81,415 individuals residing in 58 countries. Multilevel modeling was used to determine the influence of distal and proximal factors on health.

Findings indicated that both country-level safety and SES predict health regardless of the country of residence. Additionally …