I think it needs to be said that the timing of this study is relevant. 30+ years ago, it may have said that liberals die more often for the same reason. The woo woo healing crystals hippy to MAHA pipeline is very real, and it has exactly the same cause.
It was a big slap in the face when I learned (about a decade ago) the “hippes” were all bigots around here, using be a dead head as an excuse to be a drug addict.
There weren’t disparities by political alignment 30 years ago, though.
we draw on… the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health… which has tracked a nationally representative cohort of people who were adolescents in the 1990s… over the course of their lifetimes… includes a measure of political beliefs: self-reported liberal–conservative placement.
We find that conservative Americans in this cohort, who were about as healthy as liberals in the early 2010s, experienced worsening health through the 2010s and higher mortality in the early 2020s. Roughly half of this new health gap is due to people changing their ideology over time, with new entrants to the conservative coalition being less healthy than new liberals. But another sizeable share is due to people who were already liberal or conservative diverging more in health over time…
By the 2020s, conservatives were dying at significantly higher rates than liberals, with the gap concentrated in internal causes (for example, heart disease, cancer and stroke). The divide since 2020 is substantial: while only 0.2% of ‘very liberal’ respondents died of internal causes between 2020 and 2022, the probability for people who identified as ‘very conservative’ was 1.14 percentage points higher… This gap is not limited to deaths from COVID-19 and is not reducible to demographic or geographic differences between the groups, nor is it a pure function of ageing: previous cohorts’ death patterns in older data did not show a similar correlation between health and ideology before 2010.It’s the same as conspiracy theorists. Gives you a belief you’re smarter than everyone else by knowing something they don’t. Which is why both tend to go against whatever the more prevalent political ideology is at the time.
Not fast enough.
thats why the gop is obsessed with birthing more conservative: slash education funding, block sex ed, indoctrinate via manosphere, anti-abortions,etc.
Who has a higher birth rate? Libs or Conservatives?
Fortunately, concervatism is not a biologically inheritable trait.
Yeah … it’s learned from your parents
Some break free
Some
Birth rates tend to decrease with education…
Conservatives love their teen pregnancy so… them.
Conservatives.
But a lot of their kids will grow up and abandon the conservative bullshit.
It is nice to think that this would be a trend but when you start from a poor conservative family there are very good chances that you didn’t have education, emotional support and was surrounded by religious fanatics, consequently you will just propagate the circle.
And many will die young as a result of their parents’ beliefs.
This is literally natural selection in action. Do not interfere. They want to do everything on their own, no problem. But no hypocrisy. Make your choice and stand by it come what may.
It’s not happening fast enough. I think they need help.
The problem is their choices often affect others
Why do I need a vaccine if we’ve got herd immunity? Betcha didnt think of that!
Nature gives no fucks about MAGAt feelings
Nature gives no fucks
Conservative types get balance by taking fascism to it’s genocidal end against non-conservatives
It’s not natural selection if they breed before dying, and I think the conservatives are still having more children earlier then liberals because they think God said condoms and abortion are evil.
If they don’t vaccinate their kids, then evolution is back on the table, and not just for the pathogens.
Oh, darn. Anyway…
Lol, lmao even
diabetes is liberal propaganda
Who would have thought that having people like RFK sowing distrust in medicine would lead to people dying.
Let natural selection do its job.
Just sucks for their kids.
Most of their kids end up just like them. It’s matrix rules, until they’re out they may as well be agents.
The children would likely grow up to be uneducated conservatives too. It’s better this way for everyone involved.
Imagine publicly advocating for the deaths of children via preventable and gruesome illness.
Nah just advocating for the obvious consequences of their specific actions. Cause and effect.
I’m not advocating for it though?
I’m simply stating the obvious.
You said it was better, but you didn’t say it should happen.
Huh.
Yep, that’s not advocating. Checks out. Carry on.
They likely still only die after having kids, so natural selection has really no effect here.
ROFL!
very concerning news
How so?
My mom died in November 2020 due to something like an upper respiratory infection. Antibiotics could have saved her, but she chose vitamins and colloidal silver. She’d been part of this christofascism cult since the 90s
I understand how you feel. I lost an uncle the same way during covid. He was a good man. He didn’t deserve to die.
Good people can be tricked, just like bad people. It’s a goddamn shame.
Anecdotally speaking:
Older & conservative folks who use nicotine seem to smoke cigarettes at a far higher rate than other groups who tend to go for options with less health impacts or simply don’t use at all. Again, this is anecdotal, but this is where I see biggest disparity in death rates in my personal life.
Although drugs and alcohol are a tit-for-tat mixed bag because it’s such a complex issue, in my experience, older, hard-right, conservative men have a very high incidence of heavy drinking and/or hard drug use that is probably only rivaled by younger underprivileged and over privileged adults. I don’t really see a lot of middle ground in that group either, it’s like they don’t drink at all or they drink very heavily, very little in between. And to top it off, in a lot of circles, conservative drug/alcohol users have to hide it because it’s not “socially acceptable” which seems like it makes the problem so much worse and the health outcomes much more dire. Liberal folks tend to be more open and forthcoming about it, and also things like mental health medications, and although heavy drinking is heavy drinking, when you don’t have to hide it, that does make it a bit less stressful.
There’s been a relatively recent, sudden, and fairly massive adoption of “all-natural” ideology in conservative circles. Raw milk. No vaccines. Pseudo-science medical care / medicine. Doctors “don’t know nothing”. This seems to be what the article is leaning towards. And once again, older, conservative men trend higher towards ignoring their health issues and “toughing it out” when they do have real problems, leading to worse outcomes. So, no big surprise if it shows up as a higher death rate in that group.
I don’t know the exact scientific definition of death rate, but I assume this is something that’s corrected for age. A lot of my examples seem to focus on older conservatives, I’m guessing that this phenomenon is seen across all age groups? I’ve only known 2 younger people (in their 20s) who died from covid. They were conservatives and no they weren’t vaccinated. One of them believed the vaccine would make him sterile and the other likely caught covid at that dude’s funeral. I know of a 17/18 year old girl from a conservative family that died from fentanyl laced drugs as well, but I don’t know what her political leanings were. Still, even if she was liberal leaning, that’d be 2-to-1 just in my small circle.
I’d also add that a good proportion of the MAGA crowd are older males in rural areas that are poorly served by mental health, or healthcare in general. Left leanings tend to increase in urban areas. As you pointed out the culture is to “tough it out”. If they are single that is even worse as married couples usually have a spouse pushing the other to get health issues addressed. They also have a higher likelihood of suicide via firearms.
