Growing 'mortality gap' detected between Democratic and Republican counties

The study shows how politics and health outcomes have changed over time. Mortality rates and federal and state election data were examined by investigators from the hospital. Themortality gap is a widening difference between age-adjusted death rates in counties that voted for the same party in previous elections. Mortality rates decreased in Democratic counties by 22 percent while they increased in Republican counties. The mortality gap between white residents in Democratic and Republican counties increased four times during the study period. The results are in a journal.

"In an ideal world, politics and health would be independent of each other and it wouldn't matter whether one lives in an area that voted for one party or another," said the corresponding author. That isn't the case anymore. The risk of premature death is higher for people in counties that voted Republican.

The CDC WONDER database and the MIT election data and science laboratory were used by Warraich and colleagues. The way the county voted in the previous presidential election was used to calculate the mortality rate.

The team found that mortality rates in Democratic counties dropped from 850 deaths per 100,000 people to 664, but in Republican counties they went up from . There was no difference in mortality rates between black and Hispanic Americans in Democratic and Republican counties. There was a big difference between people living in Democratic and Republican counties.

When the researchers looked only at counties that had voted Republican or Democratic in every presidential election year, the mortality gap was not different. Heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory tract diseases, diabetes, and pneumonia are some of the causes of death that have been reduced in Democratic counties.

The widening gap in death rates may be related to politics. The study shows that theAffordable Care Act was passed in 2010. Medicaid expansion was adopted by more Democratic states than Republican ones.

There is an association between political environment and mortality, but it's not clear if it's related to the specific factors that explain the link. The authors did not study the effect of flipping political environments, which could be an area of future study. The study period ended before the start of the COVID-19 epidemic, which may have had a bigger impact on the mortality gap.

The mortality gap is a modern phenomenon according to the study. Mortality rates in Democratic and Republican counties were the same at the beginning of the study. We hope that our findings will show how politics and health policy can affect people's lives.

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute gave a grant to the co-author of the book.

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