Is the Red-Blue Gap in Mortality Due to Government? (with David Slichter and Case Tatro)

In the US, age-adjusted mortality rates are higher in “red” states, i.e., states with high support for the Republican Party. We ask whether this is attributable to state-level policies as opposed to confounding variables such as culture. Using a variety of empirical approaches, we find that state government explains between 0 and 20% of the mortality gap. Scaling this by the size of the (large) gap, red state policies increase mortality risk by 0-3% relative to blue state policies.