Tag: Dice

The 2017 U.S. Census Bureau’s Official Poverty Measures reports that within the country, 40 million people — more than one in every eight Americans — live in poverty. Put that together with the fact that in the U.S., about 2.6 million people die every year — and most of those deaths are associated with poverty. That changes U.S. politics. What we discovered was that before respondents with poor health died, they were 56 percent less politically active than their peers who survived because of better health. More broadly, we found that low socioeconomic status was directly linked to bad health, which in turn led to premature death. Millions of impoverished Americans die young Political participation of the poor is overall lower because of poverty, bad health and many other factors, but millions of impoverished Americans across the country also die prematurely. Add to this negative trend the fact that mortality among the poor increases during middle age — which is when citizens generally get more involved in politics. There are political consequences to premature mortality among the poor But as poor Americans die prematurely, they also erase from the statistics the adversities that cause their premature deaths in the first place. In terms of health, the U.S. has the highest infant mortality rate among developed countries as well as the lowest life expectancy overall. As a result, political participation in the U.S. is more skewed toward the rich than in countries with lower inequality (such as Australia, Canada, Germany, the Scandinavian nations or Japan), where fewer people die prematurely because their governments provide better health care for the poor.