Tim Huijts
Biographic Data
| ID | 242577 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tim Huijts |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tim |
| FAMILY NAME | Huijts |
| SIGNATURE | HUIJTS T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Maastricht University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2085-4113 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 42 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 354 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 42 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Understanding Academic Pressure in Primary School: Associations With Mental Health and Social Connectedness
Academic pressure is increasingly recognized as a factor in declining adolescent mental health, yet this phenomenon remains underexplored among early adolescents in primary education. This study investigates sources of academic pressure among 585 Dutch students (286 boys, 294 girls; aged 11–12) in their final year of primary school, and examines its associations with sex, social connectedness, and mental health. One in six students reported exper…
Disconnect To Reconnect: How Variations between Types of Smartphone Bans Influence Students’ Well-being and Social Connectedness in Dutch Secondary Education
Smartphone bans are gaining popularity in education, with approximately 40% of countries currently implementing such policies. Some schools apply smartphone restrictions to the classroom only (partial bans), while others extend the restrictions to the whole school grounds (full bans), hoping to foster student well-being and strengthen social connectedness at school. However, there is currently no empirical evidence that stricter policies are more…
Likes, Shares, and Symptoms: The Hidden Toll of Early Adolescents’ Social Media Use on Well-Being
Social media use has rapidly increased over the past decade, especially among young people. To obtain more insight into the potential negative associations with problematic social media use in Dutch early adolescents, we assessed its relation to self-reported well-being. We conducted a cross-sectional study with 585 students in their final year of primary school (11-12 years old) who completed a questionnaire during school hours. We examined the …
The second Health Inequalities Module in the European Social Survey (ESS): Methodology and research opportunities
Informal employment as a social determinant of health: A conceptual framework and research agenda accounting for context
Despite most workers globally being informally employed, our understanding of the role of informal employment as a social determinant of health and health inequalities remains limited. Existing research tends to focus mainly on direct associations between informality and health and to some extent on how informality affects health through micro-level factors such as gender and working conditions. This research has produced mixed results on the rel…
Does School Health Promotion Have Additional Value for Educational Performance? A Repeated Cross-Sectional Multilevel Study
Little information is available regarding the influence of the interplay between the school context and school health promotion on educational performance. Therefore, we examined whether the variation between primary and secondary schools regarding the educational performance of students could be explained by general school characteristics, school population characteristics, and school health promotion and to what extent these factors interact. W…
School Health Promotion, the Body Mass Index z-Score, and Psychosocial Health in Primary Schools of the Netherlands
Childhood overweight and psychosocial issues remain significant public health concerns. Schools worldwide implement health promotion programs to address these issues and to support the physical and psychosocial health of children. However, more insight is needed into the relation between these health-promoting programs and the Body Mass Index (BMI) z-score and psychosocial health of children, while taking into account how school factors might inf…
School health promotion and fruit and vegetable consumption in secondary schools: A repeated cross-sectional multilevel study
School population characteristics explained more variation between schools than Healthy School certification and general school characteristics, especially indicators of parental socioeconomic status. Nevertheless, Healthy School certification seemed to be slightly related to fruit and vegetable consumption, and might contribute to healthier dietary intake. We found small differences for some subgroups, but future research should focus on the imp…
Intergenerational educational trajectories and inequalities in longevity: A population-based study of adults born before 1965 in 14 European countries
In European countries, individual education could be the main driver of inequalities in longevity for adults older than 50 years of age and born before 1965. Further, higher social expenditure is not associated with smaller educational inequalities in longevity
School health promotion and the consumption of water and sugar-sweetened beverages in secondary schools: A cross-sectional multilevel study
The low percentages of explained variation indicate that school-level characteristics in general (including Healthy School certification) do not matter substantially for the daily consumption of water and sugar-sweetened beverages. Future research should examine whether school health promotion can contribute to healthier lifestyles, and if so, under which level of implementation and school conditions
Social functioning and personal development among individuals with low literacy skills; the role of active labour market policy
Even as education becomes increasingly important for functioning in society, and many welfare states have taken responsibility for providing education, many individuals have insufficient skill levels to fully participate in society. This paper investigates the relationship between literacy skills and basic functioning and participation in society, focusing on the role of the welfare state, and whether individuals with low literacy skills are bett…
Examining the impact of cuts to local government spending on Sure Start Children’s Centres on childhood obesity: A commentary
The adverse effects of childhood obesity are considerable, both during childhood and in the longer term. Children with obesity have a higher risk of psychological morbidity, and are more likely to be obese and have cardiovascular risk factors as adults.1 The importance of childhood conditions more generally (and social and geographical inequalities in these conditions) for population health is increasingly recognised and prioritised among both ac…
The adverse effects of foreclosure on mental health in the United States after the Great Recession: A literature review
Intersectional migration-related health inequalities in Europe: Exploring the role of migrant generation, occupational status & gender
Country‐Level Gender Equality and Adolescents’ Contraceptive Use in Europe, Canada and Israel: Findings from 33 Countries
More research is needed to identify potential causal pathways and mechanisms through which gender equality and adolescents' contraceptive use may influence one another
Attitudes towards income inequality: Winners' versus 'losers' of the perceived meritocracy
Individuals with a higher social position are more tolerant of current income inequality than individuals with a lower social position. Besides this, attitudes towards income inequality are influenced by inequality-legitimising myths in a given society. Little is known about how these two factors interact. This study combines these two lines of research and argues that different social strata are more polarised in their attitudes towards inequali…
Trade agreements, public policy and social inequalities in health
The Happiest Kids on Earth. Gender Equality and Adolescent Life Satisfaction in Europe and North America
Cross-national differences in adolescent life satisfaction in Europe and North America are consistent, but remain poorly understood. While previous studies have predominantly focused on the explanatory role of economic factors, such as national wealth and income equality, they revealed weak associations, at most. This study examines whether societal gender equality can explain the observed cross-national variability in adolescent life satisfactio…
Understanding the micro and macro politics of health: Inequalities, intersectionality & institutions - A research agenda
National income inequality and self-rated health: The differing impact of individual social trust across 89 countries
The well-known Income Inequality Hypothesis suggests that income disparities in a country are detrimental for people's health. Empirical studies testing this hypothesis so far have found mixed results. In this study, we argue that a reason for these mixed findings may be that high national income inequality mostly harms individuals with high levels of social trust. We employ data of the World Value Survey and European Value Survey, using informat…
Ethnic health inequalities in Europe. The moderating and amplifying role of healthcare system characteristics
The First Pan-European Sociological Health Inequalities Survey of the General Population: The European Social Survey Rotating Module on the Social Determinants of Health
The European Social Survey (ESS) is a biennial, academically driven, cross-sectional, pan-European social survey that charts and explains the interactions between Europe’s changing institutions and the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviour patterns of its diverse populations. As part of the seventh round of the ESS, we successfully developed a rotating module that provides a comprehensive and comparative pan-European data set on the social determinan…
An institutional theory of welfare state effects on the distribution of population health
An Internationally Comparative Study of Immigration and Adolescent Emotional and Behavioral Problems: Effects of Generation and Gender
Widowhood and Well‐being in Europe: The Role of National and Regional Context
Researchers have documented that widows have lower levels of subjective well‐being than married individuals, but we still know little about how the regional and national contexts affect the impact of widowhood on well‐being. Building on social capital theory and using data from 5 rounds of the European Social Survey ( N = 119,292 people, 206 regions, 23 countries), the authors tested how marital status composition at the national and regional lev…
Understanding the micro and macro politics of health: Inequalities, intersectionality & institutions - A research agenda
An institutional theory of welfare state effects on the distribution of population health
Attitudes towards income inequality: Winners' versus 'losers' of the perceived meritocracy
Individuals with a higher social position are more tolerant of current income inequality than individuals with a lower social position. Besides this, attitudes towards income inequality are influenced by inequality-legitimising myths in a given society. Little is known about how these two factors interact. This study combines these two lines of research and argues that different social strata are more polarised in their attitudes towards inequali…
Ethnic diversity and informal intra- and inter-ethnic contacts with neighbours in The Netherlands: A comparison of natives and ethnic minorities
We have examined the extent to which ethnic diversity in neighbourhoods and municipalities in The Netherlands is related to personal contact with neighbours from ethnic in-groups and out-groups among the native majority as well as among ethnic minorities. The results indicate that ethnic diversity is negatively related to personal contacts with native neighbours, but positively to personal contacts with neighbours from other ethnic groups. This a…
Childlessness and Psychological Well-Being in Context: A Multilevel Study on 24 European Countries
In this study, we examine to what extent childlessness is associated with poor psychological well-being in Europe. Moreover, we examine whether the relationship between childlessness and psychological well-being varies between 24 European countries. Additionally, we investigate to what extent societal norms towards childlessness and social contacts at the national level account for these cross-national variations. Information on 24,195 individual…
Macro‐level gender equality and depression in men and women in Europe
A recurrent finding in international literature is a greater prevalence of depression in women than in men. While explanations for this gender gap have been studied extensively at the individual level, few researchers have studied macro‐level determinants of depression in men and women. In the current study we aim to examine the micro–macro linkage of the relationship between gender equality and depression by gender in Europe, using data from the…
Income-related health inequalities in the Nordic countries: Examining the role of education, occupational class, and age
An Internationally Comparative Study of Immigration and Adolescent Emotional and Behavioral Problems: Effects of Generation and Gender
Intersectional migration-related health inequalities in Europe: Exploring the role of migrant generation, occupational status & gender
Ethnic health inequalities in Europe. The moderating and amplifying role of healthcare system characteristics
Education, Educational Heterogamy, and Self-Assessed Health in Europe: A Multilevel Study of Spousal Effects in 29 European Countries
This study extends earlier research on educational inequality and health in two ways. First, we examine whether own educational level and spouse's educational level are independently associated with self-assessed health throughout European societies by analysing 29 countries simultaneously. Second, we ask to what extent educational heterogamy at the country level is related to health differences between and within countries. Theories on social ca…
Immigrants’ Health in Europe: A Cross-Classified Multilevel Approach to Examine Origin Country, Destination Country, and Community Effects
In this study, we examined origin, destination, and community effects on first- and second-generation immigrants’ health in Europe. We used information from the European Social Surveys (2002–2008) on 19,210 immigrants from 123 countries of origin, living in 31 European countries. Cross-classified multilevel regression analyses reveal that political suppression in the origin country and living in countries with large numbers of immigrant peers hav…
Explaining health marginalisation of the lower educated: The role of cross‐national variations in health expenditure and labour market conditions
Several studies have shown ample cross‐national variation in the risk that lower educated people run to be in poor health. However, explanations for this cross‐national variation are still scarce. In this article we aim at filling this lacuna by investigating to what extent cross‐national variation in the health gap between the lower and higher educated in Europe is explained by governmental health expenditure, namely, how much governments contri…
Formal and informal social capital and self-rated health in Europe: A new test of accumulation and compensation mechanisms using a multi-level perspective
In this study, we simultaneously examined the influence of both informal and formal social capital at the individual and at the national level on health. Information from the first wave of European Social Surveys (2002) on 29,050 individuals from 17 European countries and Israel was analysed using multi-level regression models. We controlled for several individual and national characteristics. Self-rated health was used as an indicator of people’…
Religious Involvement, Religious Context, and Self-Assessed Health in Europe
In the present study, the authors examine the extent to which effects of individual religious involvement on self-assessed health are influenced by the religious context (i.e., religious involvement at the country level). The authors test their expectations using individual level data ( N = 127,257) on 28 countries from the European Social Surveys (2002–2008). Results of multilevel analyses show that individual religious attendance is positively …
The Happiest Kids on Earth. Gender Equality and Adolescent Life Satisfaction in Europe and North America
Cross-national differences in adolescent life satisfaction in Europe and North America are consistent, but remain poorly understood. While previous studies have predominantly focused on the explanatory role of economic factors, such as national wealth and income equality, they revealed weak associations, at most. This study examines whether societal gender equality can explain the observed cross-national variability in adolescent life satisfactio…
Ethnic Diversity and Personal Contacts at Work and at School in the Netherlands: A Comparison of Natives and Ethnic Minorities
Marital Status, Nation Marital Status Composition, and Self-Assessed Health
This study examines to what extent the often found association between marital status and self-assessed health is influenced by the marital composition of the country people live in. Four hypotheses explaining why the national marital status composition may be influential are derived and tested. Whereas earlier research in this field solely focused on divorce rates, this study includes six different indicators of the national marital status compo…
Formal and Informal Social Capital in Germany: The Role of Institutions and Ethnic Diversity
Evidence for the often-posited negative relation between ethnic diversity and various measures of social capital is burdened by difficulties measuring the levels of aggregation at which the indicators operate, the common use of cross-sectional data, and by the common omission of macro-level variables that plausibly confound the relation between ethnic diversity and social capital. To overcome these problems, this article studies social capital in…
Country‐Level Gender Equality and Adolescents’ Contraceptive Use in Europe, Canada and Israel: Findings from 33 Countries
More research is needed to identify potential causal pathways and mechanisms through which gender equality and adolescents' contraceptive use may influence one another
Trade agreements, public policy and social inequalities in health
Informal employment as a social determinant of health: A conceptual framework and research agenda accounting for context
Despite most workers globally being informally employed, our understanding of the role of informal employment as a social determinant of health and health inequalities remains limited. Existing research tends to focus mainly on direct associations between informality and health and to some extent on how informality affects health through micro-level factors such as gender and working conditions. This research has produced mixed results on the rel…
Social functioning and personal development among individuals with low literacy skills; the role of active labour market policy
Even as education becomes increasingly important for functioning in society, and many welfare states have taken responsibility for providing education, many individuals have insufficient skill levels to fully participate in society. This paper investigates the relationship between literacy skills and basic functioning and participation in society, focusing on the role of the welfare state, and whether individuals with low literacy skills are bett…
National income inequality and self-rated health: The differing impact of individual social trust across 89 countries
The well-known Income Inequality Hypothesis suggests that income disparities in a country are detrimental for people's health. Empirical studies testing this hypothesis so far have found mixed results. In this study, we argue that a reason for these mixed findings may be that high national income inequality mostly harms individuals with high levels of social trust. We employ data of the World Value Survey and European Value Survey, using informat…
Widowhood and Well‐being in Europe: The Role of National and Regional Context
Researchers have documented that widows have lower levels of subjective well‐being than married individuals, but we still know little about how the regional and national contexts affect the impact of widowhood on well‐being. Building on social capital theory and using data from 5 rounds of the European Social Survey ( N = 119,292 people, 206 regions, 23 countries), the authors tested how marital status composition at the national and regional lev…
Self-reported health assessments in the 2002 World Health Survey: How do they correlate with education?
OBJECTIVE: To assess the value of self-rated health assessments by examining the association between education and self-rated poor health. METHODS: We used the globally representative population-based sample from the 2002 World Health Survey, composed of 219,713 men and women aged 25 and over in 69 countries, to examine the association between education and self-rated poor health. In a binary regression model with a logit link function, we used s…
Education, Educational Heterogamy, and Self-Assessed Health in Europe: A Multilevel Study of Spousal Effects in 29 European Countries
This study extends earlier research on educational inequality and health in two ways. First, we examine whether own educational level and spouse's educational level are independently associated with self-assessed health throughout European societies by analysing 29 countries simultaneously. Second, we ask to what extent educational heterogamy at the country level is related to health differences between and within countries. Theories on social ca…
Income-related health inequalities in the Nordic countries: Examining the role of education, occupational class, and age
De gezondheidskloof tussen lager en hoger opgeleiden - Verschillen tussen landen verklaard door overheidsuitgaven in de gezondheidszorg en arbeidsmarktomstandigheden
Cross-national variation in the educational health gap explained by governmental health expenditure and labour market characteristics. Previous research shows that even though the lower educated run a relatively high risk to be in poor health, there is ample cross-national variation in the disparity between educational groups in having poor health. Explanations for these differences between countries are, however, rather scarce. We set out to add…
Marital Status, Nation Marital Status Composition, and Self-Assessed Health
This study examines to what extent the often found association between marital status and self-assessed health is influenced by the marital composition of the country people live in. Four hypotheses explaining why the national marital status composition may be influential are derived and tested. Whereas earlier research in this field solely focused on divorce rates, this study includes six different indicators of the national marital status compo…
Religious Involvement, Religious Context, and Self-Assessed Health in Europe
In the present study, the authors examine the extent to which effects of individual religious involvement on self-assessed health are influenced by the religious context (i.e., religious involvement at the country level). The authors test their expectations using individual level data ( N = 127,257) on 28 countries from the European Social Surveys (2002–2008). Results of multilevel analyses show that individual religious attendance is positively …
Immigrants’ Health in Europe: A Cross-Classified Multilevel Approach to Examine Origin Country, Destination Country, and Community Effects
In this study, we examined origin, destination, and community effects on first- and second-generation immigrants’ health in Europe. We used information from the European Social Surveys (2002–2008) on 19,210 immigrants from 123 countries of origin, living in 31 European countries. Cross-classified multilevel regression analyses reveal that political suppression in the origin country and living in countries with large numbers of immigrant peers hav…
Explaining health marginalisation of the lower educated: The role of cross‐national variations in health expenditure and labour market conditions
Several studies have shown ample cross‐national variation in the risk that lower educated people run to be in poor health. However, explanations for this cross‐national variation are still scarce. In this article we aim at filling this lacuna by investigating to what extent cross‐national variation in the health gap between the lower and higher educated in Europe is explained by governmental health expenditure, namely, how much governments contri…
Macro‐level gender equality and depression in men and women in Europe
A recurrent finding in international literature is a greater prevalence of depression in women than in men. While explanations for this gender gap have been studied extensively at the individual level, few researchers have studied macro‐level determinants of depression in men and women. In the current study we aim to examine the micro–macro linkage of the relationship between gender equality and depression by gender in Europe, using data from the…
Formal and informal social capital and self-rated health in Europe: A new test of accumulation and compensation mechanisms using a multi-level perspective
In this study, we simultaneously examined the influence of both informal and formal social capital at the individual and at the national level on health. Information from the first wave of European Social Surveys (2002) on 29,050 individuals from 17 European countries and Israel was analysed using multi-level regression models. We controlled for several individual and national characteristics. Self-rated health was used as an indicator of people’…
Boekbespreking: Hart, B. de, Een tweede paspoort: Dubbele nationaliteit in de Verenigde Staten, Duitsland en Nederland
Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community
Intergenerationele overdracht van risicogedrag - Rookgedrag, alcoholgebruik en ongezonde eetgewoonten van ouders en hun volwassen kinderen
Intergenerational transmission of risk behaviour: the association between smoking, alcohol use, and unhealthy eating habits of parents and their adult children .Employing information on more than 1200 individuals from the Family Survey Dutch Population 2000, we study to what extent risk behaviour (smoking, alcohol use, and unhealthy eating habits) is transmitted intergenerationally from parents to their adult children. Moreover, by building on th…
Childlessness and Psychological Well-Being in Context: A Multilevel Study on 24 European Countries
In this study, we examine to what extent childlessness is associated with poor psychological well-being in Europe. Moreover, we examine whether the relationship between childlessness and psychological well-being varies between 24 European countries. Additionally, we investigate to what extent societal norms towards childlessness and social contacts at the national level account for these cross-national variations. Information on 24,195 individual…
Treatment for depression in 63 countries worldwide: Describing and explaining cross-national differences
Ethnic Diversity and Personal Contacts at Work and at School in the Netherlands: A Comparison of Natives and Ethnic Minorities
Ethnic diversity and informal intra- and inter-ethnic contacts with neighbours in The Netherlands: A comparison of natives and ethnic minorities
We have examined the extent to which ethnic diversity in neighbourhoods and municipalities in The Netherlands is related to personal contact with neighbours from ethnic in-groups and out-groups among the native majority as well as among ethnic minorities. The results indicate that ethnic diversity is negatively related to personal contacts with native neighbours, but positively to personal contacts with neighbours from other ethnic groups. This a…
An institutional theory of welfare state effects on the distribution of population health
An Internationally Comparative Study of Immigration and Adolescent Emotional and Behavioral Problems: Effects of Generation and Gender
Widowhood and Well‐being in Europe: The Role of National and Regional Context
Researchers have documented that widows have lower levels of subjective well‐being than married individuals, but we still know little about how the regional and national contexts affect the impact of widowhood on well‐being. Building on social capital theory and using data from 5 rounds of the European Social Survey ( N = 119,292 people, 206 regions, 23 countries), the authors tested how marital status composition at the national and regional lev…
Formal and Informal Social Capital in Germany: The Role of Institutions and Ethnic Diversity
Evidence for the often-posited negative relation between ethnic diversity and various measures of social capital is burdened by difficulties measuring the levels of aggregation at which the indicators operate, the common use of cross-sectional data, and by the common omission of macro-level variables that plausibly confound the relation between ethnic diversity and social capital. To overcome these problems, this article studies social capital in…
National income inequality and self-rated health: The differing impact of individual social trust across 89 countries
The well-known Income Inequality Hypothesis suggests that income disparities in a country are detrimental for people's health. Empirical studies testing this hypothesis so far have found mixed results. In this study, we argue that a reason for these mixed findings may be that high national income inequality mostly harms individuals with high levels of social trust. We employ data of the World Value Survey and European Value Survey, using informat…
Ethnic health inequalities in Europe. The moderating and amplifying role of healthcare system characteristics
The First Pan-European Sociological Health Inequalities Survey of the General Population: The European Social Survey Rotating Module on the Social Determinants of Health
The European Social Survey (ESS) is a biennial, academically driven, cross-sectional, pan-European social survey that charts and explains the interactions between Europe’s changing institutions and the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviour patterns of its diverse populations. As part of the seventh round of the ESS, we successfully developed a rotating module that provides a comprehensive and comparative pan-European data set on the social determinan…
Trade agreements, public policy and social inequalities in health
The Happiest Kids on Earth. Gender Equality and Adolescent Life Satisfaction in Europe and North America
Cross-national differences in adolescent life satisfaction in Europe and North America are consistent, but remain poorly understood. While previous studies have predominantly focused on the explanatory role of economic factors, such as national wealth and income equality, they revealed weak associations, at most. This study examines whether societal gender equality can explain the observed cross-national variability in adolescent life satisfactio…
Sociology (27 works) · Economics (22 works) · Health disparities and outcomes (22 works) · Political science (22 works) · Psychology (22 works) · Demography (18 works) · Population (17 works) · Medicine (16 works) · Demographic economics (14 works) · Economic growth (14 works)