Conservative state policies generally associated with higher mortality

[Rotadom]

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/968551

State policies in eight different policy domains, including gun safety, labor and tobacco, are associated with U.S. working-age mortality, according to a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jennifer Karas Montez of Syracuse University, US, and colleagues. They note that more conservative state policies were generally associated with higher mortality.


Americans die younger than people in most other high-income countries and within the United States life expectancy differs markedly across geographic areas. In 2019, it ranged from 74.4 years in Mississippi to 80.9 years in Hawaii.


In the new work, the researchers used data from the 1999-2019 National Vital Statistics System to calculate state-level age-adjusted mortality rates for deaths from all causes and from cardiovascular disease (CVD), alcohol, suicide and drug poisoning among adults ages 25 to 64. They merged that data with annual state-level data on eight policy domains, where each state’s policies were scored on a 0-to-1 conservative-to-liberal continuum.


The analysis revealed that more liberal policies on the environment, gun safety, labor, economic taxes and tobacco taxes were associated with lower mortality in each state. However, for marijuana, more conservative policies were associated with lower mortality. Particularly strong associations were found between gun safety policies and suicide mortality among men; between labor policies and alcohol-induced mortality; and between economic and tobacco tax policies and cardiovascular disease mortality. Simulations suggested that changing all policies in all states to a fully liberal orientation could have saved 171,030 lives in 2019, while changing them to a fully conservative orientation may have cost 217,635 lives.


The authors conclude that the emergence of more conservative state policies in several domains and shifts in the share of the population living in states with these policies provide a partial explanation for the high and rising mortality among working-age Americans and the overall mortality disadvantage of the US compared to other high-income countries.


The authors add: “U.S. state policies in recent decades may have contributed to the high and rising mortality rates of working-age adults. Changing state policies could prevent thousands of deaths every year from cardiovascular disease, suicide, alcohol, and drug poisoning.”

 

[jaF0]

I saw something about this on a legitimate news site, but I wasn't really sure if it was worth posting. I mean, it's pretty hard to work the numbers to come to such a conclusion.

 

[Paul_Chance]

PLOS ONE is a "pay to publish" site.

That doesn't mean the research there is automatically bad, just like being "self-published" doesn't automatically mean an author or a book is bad.

It does mean though that simply being published in PLOS ONE isn't going to get you any sort of credibility. It's part of the open-source movement that is trying to get traction in the scientific publication world and remove some of the door-keepers.

It claims peer review, but it's really self-identified peers, self-selecting to review certain articles.

Think of it as Wikipedia for Profit LOL.

 

[Rotadom]

PLOS ONE is a "pay to publish" site.

That doesn't mean the research there is automatically bad, just like being "self-published" doesn't automatically mean an author or a book is bad.

It does mean though that simply being published in PLOS ONE isn't going to get you any sort of credibility. It's part of the open-source movement that is trying to get traction in the scientific publication world and remove some of the door-keepers.

It claims peer review, but it's really self-identified peers, self-selecting to review certain articles.

Think of it as Wikipedia for Profit LOL.

I know. They are way less credible than a random person on an anonymous porn site bringing nothing but his own biased opinion with no facts to the discussion. LOL.

 

[Paul_Chance]

I know. They are way less credible than a random person on an anonymous porn site bringing nothing but his own biased opinion with no facts to the discussion. LOL.

LOL - I know! We're all of the highest credibility here! I swear!

 

[FelHarper]

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/968551

I would like to know for certain what a “liberal” policy on drugs is. Looking at the methodology of the study, it would seem to indicate that what we think of as a liberal policy, e.g. legalization of drugs, is actually considered conservative by the definition of the study. It then makes sense that a “conservative” policy of legalizing marijuana would save lives, given its known properties as a therapeutic for conditions such as epilepsy. Their data would then be making the case that a tough, “liberal” stance on other drugs such as heroine and crystal meth is, in fact, also saving lives.

Likewise, a “liberal” stance of regulation in restricting the purchase of alcohol by licensing, location, time of day and day of the week, more common in places like Texas, is apparently correlated with saving lives and “conservative” California with few restrictions has about double the Texas rate of alcohol poisoning.

For suicide and liberal policy with respect to gun control, which in this case reflects what we would think of as liberal policy, you can see a correlation, with the states with strict gun laws having lower suicide rates. However, there is plenty of reason to doubt the strength of that correlation. For example, Wyoming, which has the highest suicide rate of any state, is little different in its gun laws from New Hampshire, whose suicide rate is less than half of Wyoming’s.

But then, I tend to be highly skeptical of ANY study, especially in light of the reproducibility/replication crisis in science.