Politics also affects birth rate.
U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health
121–130 of 137 posts
Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health
#122A key takeaway from the study is that Americans are getting healthier. Figure 5 shows a big drop in heart disease which must be due to more exercise and better eating habits. Also: "In this national analysis, we found that Americans living in counties that voted Democratic during presidential elections from 2000 to 2016 experienced lower age adjusted mortality rates (AAMRs) than residents of counties that voted for a…
Not a doctor, but I believe that has to do with vastly improved survival rates for heart attacks. Hospitals have just gotten much better about it, by knowing that they have to act fast and having procedures in place to ensure that happens. 20 years ago a heart attack had a very high chance of death, even if you’re close to a hospital. These days, you’re much less likely to die if you get to a hospital / medic in time…
Why would that make Democratic voting counties see improvement but not Republican voting counties?
Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not a doctor, but I believe that has to do with vastly improved survival rates for heart attacks. Hospitals have just gotten much better about it, by knowing that they have to act fast and having procedures in place to ensure that happens. 20 years ago a heart attack had a very high chance of death, even if you’re close to a hospital. These days, you’re much less likely to die if you get to a hospital / medic in time…
Why would that make Democratic voting counties see improvement but not Republican voting counties?
Not over a year but over decades I expect many indirect consequences of policies - like an underfunded energy grid fails and you cannot get your heart attack treatment timely... like a butterfly effect, not immediately visible but snowballing over years in the statistics.
Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
What people mean when they say that is that someone's opinion on evidence-based policies shouldn't be intertwined with their allegiance to a particular party. The entire point of politics is determining policy, and policy has an effect on the outcomes the doctors that wrote the article want to improve.
In any case authors are clearly making a political argument and implying if not explicitly making a causation argument here, not merely describing the state of the world.
The state of the world is the result of politics. You can't talk about one without talking about the other. Like the Texas energy grid being a disaster is the result of conservative deregulation and privatization. Merely describing the state means you're simply describing the effect and not the cause.
Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would that make Democratic voting counties see improvement but not Republican voting counties?
Not over a year but over decades I expect many indirect consequences of policies - like an underfunded energy grid fails and you cannot get your heart attack treatment timely... like a butterfly effect, not immediately visible but snowballing over years in the statistics.
I am skeptical, because almost all of the effect was due to white populations in republican counties (as they point out in the article). Other ethnicities apparently performed similarly across counties (again, as they point out). Seems a lot more likely that the decline of racism over the recent decades has just made poor white people look like poor other ethnicities (which we do see in the data). This also correlates with switching to vote Republican because you tend to vote populist when you are getting screwed and the Republicans have been the party of populism for at least the last decade. Anyways, the point is this study should be viewed with extreme skepticism because it is doubtful they captured all the external confounding factors.
Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016... >In fact, Silver parsed the data to discover the average Trump voter makes $72,000 per year — a middle-class income solidly above the typical American. >As compared with most Americans, Trump’s voters are better off. The median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000, based on estimates derived from exit pol…
Off topic, but good grief: >> But it’s well above the national median household income of about $56,000 That's household . And the Fed wants LOWER wages. What is wrong with people!? Pay more!
I'm curious how old you are and where you grew up.
In the 90s I would have considered $56,000 per year as rich. In the 2000s it would have been upper-middle class, or "senior white collar professional". In the 2010s probably down to "office job" or "good blue-collar job".
There's something funny about seeing people point to a salary that I grew up thinking was a best-case scenario dream as being insufficient. Maybe if our policies focused more on quality of life rather than nominal wages, we could help people instead of just having decades of inflation.
Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Off topic, but good grief: >> But it’s well above the national median household income of about $56,000 That's household . And the Fed wants LOWER wages. What is wrong with people!? Pay more!
I'm curious how old you are and where you grew up. In the 90s I would have considered $56,000 per year as rich. In the 2000s it would have been upper-middle class, or "senior white collar professional". In the 2010s probably down to "office job" or "good blue-collar job". There's something funny about seeing people point to a salary that I grew up thinking was a best-case scenario dream as being insufficient. Maybe i…
> In the 90s I would have considered $56,000 per year as rich.
If you look at historical income, $56k in 1995 is roughly where $100k is now, in terms of where it put you in the income distribution.
> In the 2000s it would have been upper-middle class, or "senior white collar professional"
In 2005, it's like a little under $85k today, again, by where it puts you on the income distribution, not buying power.
I think that the farther back you go, the more you are overstating what $56k was.
Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Off topic, but good grief: >> But it’s well above the national median household income of about $56,000 That's household . And the Fed wants LOWER wages. What is wrong with people!? Pay more!
I'm curious how old you are and where you grew up. In the 90s I would have considered $56,000 per year as rich. In the 2000s it would have been upper-middle class, or "senior white collar professional". In the 2010s probably down to "office job" or "good blue-collar job". There's something funny about seeing people point to a salary that I grew up thinking was a best-case scenario dream as being insufficient. Maybe i…
I'm in my 50s.
Stop blaming the working class when the rich keep taking a larger portion of the pie. Just stop.
Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shouldn't the median republican voter have an higher income (and way higher capital) than the median democrat voter? I agree that if you go only at the top decile, the median democrat voter could make a bit more than the median republican voter (idk really), but if you take the whole population? I remember 2016 Sanders campaign funding. Also, i went to West Virginia, an know the people there, happen to meet the local…
> Shouldn't the median republican voter have an higher income (and way higher capital) than the median democrat voter? It's not really this simple anymore. Americans are sorting into the party of college grads (Democrats) and the party of non-college-grads (Republicans). This doesn't translate as neatly to income as you might think, but it's definitely a factor. > they eat venison and a lot of homegrown vegetables, t…
Despite being oft-repeated, that educational claim isn't really true.
In 2016, Trump beat Hillary in white college-educated women, despite all the claims about gender and education popular in certain sections of media.
I think one big problem with discussion about American politics today is that we all pretend like "Republican" and "Democrat" are in any way logically consistent groups representing two opinions. The truth is, they're both completely absurd coalitions of diverse groups, bound up out of necessity by America having a two-party system.
Instead of trying to split people into two groups along whatever line - education, income, urbanization, race, religion, we should just accept that the parties are a hodgepodge of many different groups. For instance, the Democrats have as a coalition both Black voters and LGBT voters, despite the fact that Black Americans have been far less progressive on LGBT issues than White Americans. Republicans have as a coalition both "small government" fiscal conservatives and Christian social conservatives, despite these groups often having polar opposite policy goals.
Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious how old you are and where you grew up. In the 90s I would have considered $56,000 per year as rich. In the 2000s it would have been upper-middle class, or "senior white collar professional". In the 2010s probably down to "office job" or "good blue-collar job". There's something funny about seeing people point to a salary that I grew up thinking was a best-case scenario dream as being insufficient. Maybe i…
I'm in my 50s. Stop blaming the working class when the rich keep taking a larger portion of the pie. Just stop.
I'm not sure why you're attacking me with this random, unrelated statement. I didn't "blame the working class" in any way, and re-reading my comment I can't come up with any interpretation of my statement that could be read as such.
Are you trying to suggest that the working class is the root cause of inflation, and that by me pointing out inflation it was an attack on that group? I genuinely can't figure out why you're angry here. Is this trolling? I'm confused.