文章基本信息

标题：Diverging Life Expectancies and Voting Patterns in the 2016 US Presidential Election
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作者：Jacob Bor , SD
期刊名称：American journal of public health
印刷版ISSN：0090-0036
出版年度：2017
卷号：107
期号：10
页码：1560-1562
DOI：10.2105/AJPH.2017.303945
语种：English
出版社：American Public Health Association
摘要：Objectives. To assess whether voting patterns in the 2016 US presidential election were correlated with long-run trends in county life expectancy. Methods. I examined county-level voting data from the 2008 and 2016 presidential elections and assessed Donald Trump’s share of the 2016 vote, change in the Republican vote share between 2008 and 2016, and changes in absolute numbers of Democratic and Republican votes. County-level estimates of life expectancy at birth were obtained for 1980 and 2014 from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Results. Changes in county life expectancy from 1980 to 2014 were strongly negatively associated with Trump’s vote share, with less support for Trump in counties experiencing greater survival gains. Counties in which life expectancy stagnated or declined saw a 10-percentage-point increase in the Republican vote share between 2008 and 2016. Conclusions. Residents of counties left out from broader life expectancy gains abandoned the Democratic Party in the 2016 presidential election. Since coming to power, the Trump administration has proposed cuts to health insurance for the poor, social programs, health research, and environmental and worker protections, which are key determinants of population health. Health gaps likely will continue to widen without significant public investment in population health. The election of Donald Trump was fueled in part by a sense of disenfranchisement and economic marginalization. However, economic indicators do not fully capture the divergence in well-being across the United States. To what extent did voting patterns map onto growing health divides? Life expectancy gaps across US counties have widened in the past 3 decades, with many counties increasingly left behind. 1–4 I assessed the association between changes in county life expectancy from 1980 to 2014 and voting patterns in the 2008 and 2016 presidential elections.