Study finds conservative policies linked to higher death rates for Americans

The November midterm elections will serve as a political referendum on a number of issues, from gas prices to gun safety legislation and more. You might think “At the end of the day, it’s just politics.” But according to new research, social and economic policies are a matter of life or death for Americans of working age. Changing state policies to become more liberal will save hundreds of thousands of lives while switching to conservative policies will cost them, A study published Wednesday in PLUS ONE Find.

The new study is one of a Recently iceberg To consider the link between politics and the unexpected increase in deaths among working-age Americans. Compared to European countries and other Western peers, the high mortality among this population in the United States was “disturbing,” Jennifer Karas Montez, a sociology researcher at Syracuse University and first author of the new research, told The Daily Beast. She and her colleagues looked at mortality rates for major causes of death over a 20-year period, at a time when “dramatic changes in state policies” were taking place.

The relationship between more conservative or liberal state policies and events such as cardiovascular deaths or suicides is more clear for some policies, such as tobacco regulations. More liberal environmental policies are associated with lower levels of air pollution and lower rates of asthma and other respiratory problems that can increase the chances of death, Montez said. Liberal labor policies, such as increasing the minimum wage, may put more money in workers’ pockets that they can spend on healthy food or medical care.

“Often we don’t talk about economic policies as if they were health policies, but the truth is that they are,” she said.

Some of these policies took a few years to immediately affect mortality rates. For example, criminal justice reform has taken at least three years to have significant effects on death rates — Montez said this may be due to the fact that these policies can have a negative impact on people’s lives and livelihoods, and no one immediately felt that. On the other hand, liberal firearm safety laws have led to an almost immediate decline in suicide deaths.

Among the policies studied, more liberal marijuana policies were associated with lower life expectancy. However, other studies on the public health effects of marijuana policies have been inconclusive, identifying benefits such as treating chronic pain but increasing the risk of motor vehicle accidents.

We often don’t talk about economic policies as if they were health policies, but the truth is that they are.

Jennifer Karas Montez, Syracuse University

If states had adopted liberal policies across the board, Montez and her co-authors estimated that 171,030 lives could have been saved in 2019 alone; On the flip side, conservative policies in all states could have resulted in an additional 217,635 working-age deaths.

Montez said Americans should realize that decisions that are made in the homes of the state are becoming increasingly important to their lives.

“We have fingered opioid manufacturers, we have fingered multinational companies, but state policy makers have been given a free pass, and that’s really critical oversight,” she said. “We need to make sure that we hold them accountable for the decisions they make that affect how healthy and long we live.”

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