ArticleSSM - population health2019
The politics hypothesis and racial disparities in infants' health in the United States.
Article in SSM - population health, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 19 papers.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed.
- Court-mandated redistricting and disparities in infant mortality and deaths of despair.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Re-politicizing the WHO's social determinants of health framework.Health promotion international · 2024Article
- Is Redistribution Good for Our Health? Examining the Macrocorrelation between Welfare Generosity and Health across EU Nations over the Last 40 Years.Journal of health politics, policy and law · 2024Article
- Male twinning after the 2008 Obama election: A test of symbolic empowerment.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2024Article
- Measuring variation in infant mortality and deaths of despair by US congressional district in Pennsylvania: a methodological case study.American journal of epidemiology · 2024Article
- Political Ideology Direction of Policy Agendas and Maternal Mortality Outcomes in the U.S., 1915-2007.Maternal and child health journal · 2024Article
- Perceived status threat and health among White Americans: A scoping review.SSM - population health · 2023Article
- Health Equity and the Dynamism of Structural Racism and Public Policy.The Milbank quarterly · 2022Article
- The Political Realignment of Health: How Partisan Power Shaped Infant Health in the United States, 1915-2017.Journal of health politics, policy and law · 2022Article
- Partisan Control of U.S. State Governments: Politics as a Social Determinant of Infant Health.American journal of preventive medicine · 2022Article
- Linking Data on Constituent Health with Elected Officials' Opinions: Associations Between Urban Health Disparities and Mayoral Officials' Beliefs About Health Disparities in Their Cities.The Milbank quarterly · 2021Article
- Spatial and temporal inequalities in mortality in the USA, 1968-2016.Health & place · 2021Article
- A tale of two generations: Maternal skin color and adverse birth outcomes in Black/African American women.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2020Article
- The Unequal Effect of Income on Risk of Overweight/Obesity of Whites and Blacks with Knee Osteoarthritis: the Osteoarthritis Initiative.Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2020Article
- African Americans' Diminished Returns of Parental Education on Adolescents' Depression and Suicide in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study.European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education · 2020Article
- Minorities' Diminished Returns of Parental Educational Attainment on Adolescents' Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Problems.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- What Predicts a Mayoral Official's Opinion about the Role of Stress in Health Disparities?Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2020Article
- Unequal Associations between Educational Attainment and Occupational Stress across Racial and Ethnic Groups.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2019Article
- Binge Drinking among Economically Disadvantaged African American Older Adults with Diabetes.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We propose the politics hypothesis-i.e., the hypothesis that political forces comprise either a powerful predecessor of the social determinants of health or are essential social determinants of health themselves. We examine the hypothesis that political actors like presidents, their ideology, and institutions like the political parties they represent shape overall and race-specific health outcomes. Using census and Vital Statistics data among many other sources, we apply both theory- and data-driven statistical methods to assess the role of the president's party and the president's political ideology as predictors of overall and race-specific infant mortality in the United States, 1965-2010. We find that, net of trend, Republican presidencies and socially-conservative ideology of U.S. presidents are strongly associated with slower declines of infant mortality rates, overall and for white and black infants, compared to Democratic and socially-liberal presidents in the U.S. Approximately half (46%) of the white-black infant mortality gap, about 20,000 additional infant deaths, and most if not all the infant mortality rate gap between the U.S. and the rest of the developed world, can be attributed to the 28 years of Republican administrations during the study period. These findings are consistent with the politicization of public health and the conceptualization of politics as a powerful predecessor, in the causal chain, of the social determinants of health. Understanding the political ideological and institutional contexts in which health policies and healthcare and welfare programs are implemented, as well as how governments construct culture and social psychology, provide a more comprehensive framework for understanding and improving population patterns of disease, mortality, and entrenched racial disparities in health in the U.S.
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