A new study found deaths rates are improving faster in Democratic counties than Republican ones.
Experts are calling this phenomenon the "mortality gap," and say state policies, individual health decisions and a shift in party demographics may be widening it.
Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital looked at mortality rates using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and compared them to federal and state election data from 2001 to 2019.
The team compiled data from more than 3,000 U.S. counties in all 50 states and found mortality rates decreased by 22% in Democratic counties but dropped only 11% in Republican counties, according to the study published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal.
“We wanted to see whether the political affiliation had an association with death rates in the U.S.,” said corresponding author Dr. Haider Warraich, associate physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. “Over these two decades, the mortality gap between Republican and Democratic counties has really widened quite considerably.”
Mortality rates in Democratic counties dropped from 850 deaths per 100,000 people to 664, but in Republican counties, mortality rates declined from 867 to 771. The mortality gap widened across leading causes of death in the U.S. including heart disease, cancer, drug overdoses and suicide.
Democratic counties also saw greater reductions in deaths from chronic lower respiratory tract diseases, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, and kidney disease.
Although Black and Hispanic Americans in Republican counties saw greater reductions in mortality rate compared to their white counterparts, the study still found Black residents experienced an overall higher mortality rate than any other race and ethnicity, regardless of the county's political leaning.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...udy-shows-widening-death-rate-gap/7530296001/
Experts are calling this phenomenon the "mortality gap," and say state policies, individual health decisions and a shift in party demographics may be widening it.
Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital looked at mortality rates using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and compared them to federal and state election data from 2001 to 2019.
The team compiled data from more than 3,000 U.S. counties in all 50 states and found mortality rates decreased by 22% in Democratic counties but dropped only 11% in Republican counties, according to the study published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal.
“We wanted to see whether the political affiliation had an association with death rates in the U.S.,” said corresponding author Dr. Haider Warraich, associate physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. “Over these two decades, the mortality gap between Republican and Democratic counties has really widened quite considerably.”
Mortality rates in Democratic counties dropped from 850 deaths per 100,000 people to 664, but in Republican counties, mortality rates declined from 867 to 771. The mortality gap widened across leading causes of death in the U.S. including heart disease, cancer, drug overdoses and suicide.
Democratic counties also saw greater reductions in deaths from chronic lower respiratory tract diseases, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, and kidney disease.
Although Black and Hispanic Americans in Republican counties saw greater reductions in mortality rate compared to their white counterparts, the study still found Black residents experienced an overall higher mortality rate than any other race and ethnicity, regardless of the county's political leaning.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...udy-shows-widening-death-rate-gap/7530296001/