(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Non-Hispanic whites in Democratic voting states live longer than they do in the other states. [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']

Date: 2022-09-23

The high dot shows that non-Democratic states death rate for non-Hispanic whites aged 1-4 is 43% higher than it is in Democratic voting states. Data from Underlying Cause of Death link at wonder.cdc.gov

I know that many of the Daily Kos readers don’t like dealing with numbers so instead of data tables the main thing I will present today is the above image. It is a graph that shows how much higher age specific death rates, the number of deaths per 100,000 per year, are for non-Hispanic whites in non-Democratic, hereafter called the other, voting states than in Democratic voting states. It is easy to read, the first dot shows that the death rate for people before their first birth day in the other states is 122% as high, or you could say 22% higher than, as it is for the same group in Democratic voting states. The last dot shows that the same measure for the same racial and ethnic group over age 85 is about 98%. The basic fact is that in the states that have regularly voted for Democrats the people have benefited by living longer. In later posts I will explain why and cover the major racial and ethnic groups as well as look at changes over a longer time period.

In general a longer life is a good sign that the quality of life during the years lived is better. Healthy people are generally happier and contribute more to the the well being of everyone else. And, if you are surrounded by healthier people, they contribute more to the quality of your life. Death rate data is actually the best indicator of the quality of life and what produces a lower death rate also produces a longer and better life. The data used to produce the above graph lets us know that people living in states governed by Democrats live both happier and longer lives. This finding strongly suggests that the different effects of health care delivery is determined by factors outside patients behavior and is at least substantially determined by state politics.

If the whites living in the other voting states had the same death rate as those living in the Democratic voting states all the dots on the graph would be close to and around the 100% line. The fact that only the last two dots, for age 84 and 85+, are as low as 100% means that many of the younger deaths in the states not voting for Democrats would not have happened if they had lived in a Democratic voting state. While it is easy to consider these last two dots a good sign for the other voting states, it really is not a good sign. It is a result of the survival of the fittest effect. Rather than being a good sign, it is a direct consequence of what caused many people not to make it to age 85. For example, the death rate for Native Americans, who have the highest overall death rate, aged 85+ in 2019 is 8,280.1 but for whites it is 14,020.8. For aged 30 the death rates are 350.7 for Native Americans and 139.2 for non-Hispanic whites. Time and time again mortality data shows that high younger death rates produces fewer older people but since they have to be super fit to live to old age, they have lower death rates.

I mathematically estimated the number of excess deaths that occurred in the other voting states by using a spreadsheet with data for the same age groups in the table for every year from 1999 through 2020. That gave me 1,650 lines of data. For each line I applied the Democratic voting states death rate for the same people at the same time to the other population and then calculated and added up the number of deaths they would have experienced if they experienced the Democratic state’s death rate for each age group every year. That added up to 25,968,192. I then added up the total deaths they actually experienced, 28,350,396. I then subtracted the first from the second and got 2,382,204, the number of the other state deaths that would not have happened if they had experienced the Democratic part of the country’s age and year specfic death rates. That is 8.4%, lower. In other words about one in twelve of their deaths would not have happened if all the states voted Democratic.

In my next post, it will be here in a few days, I will address how and why this is happening.

If you want to see where I got the grouping of states, and see what states are in each group, it is from this earlier Daily Kos page by Brainwrap:

www.dailykos.com/… His graph also shows that mixed party and Republican voting states have very similar COVID death rates. I looked at the pattern in the other causes of death and found the big difference is between Democratic voting states and everyone else. And a graph with two groups is much easier to understand than one with three groups.

In my next Daily Kos posting, I will extend this analysis of political party in power on death rates to show how much this difference in death rates hits non-Hispanic whites from 1999 through 2020.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/23/2123415/-Non-Hispanic-whites-in-Democratic-voting-states-live-longer-than-they-do-in-the-other-states

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/

You are viewing proxied material from magical.fish. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.