Choose Life, Live Left? Study Finds That Liberals Outlive Conservatives

For conservatives, it must sound like “better red than dead” all over again. A new study in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health suggests that liberals live longer than conservatives in the United States. The researchers looked at more than 32,000 adults and tracked them over 15 years. The result was surprising: conservatives seemed to be expiring faster than their counterparts on the left. However, conservatives claimed to be happier than their counterparts in life.

It has been reported that Hillary Clinton has been working on a new campaign theme. Perhaps they should consider a “Vote Hillary Or Die” campaign.

Roman Pabayo, a community health researcher at the University of Nevada said that the group relied on more concrete data like actual death records than did prior studies. They also eliminated other factors by comparing conservatives and liberals of similar age, sex, and socioeconomic status. Notably, when divided simply between parties, Democratic and Republican party members died at the same rate, but when compared on ideological grounds, conservatives bit the dust first on average.

Subu V. Subramanian, a professor of population health and geography at Harvard was critical of the findings. His study relied on self-reporting and found that Republicans reported better health and they were 15% less likely to smoke. He also found that Republicans and conservatives were benefitted by being more religious and “more tied into social networks and organizations.”

It may still be too early for some conservatives to embrace wage equity and global warming. The difference in death rates is described by Subramanian as “slight” in the new study.

Source: USA Today