More Words, Deeper Hole

I once saw a study that looked at relative income and live expectancy in Republican-controlled areas vs. Democrat-controlled areas. And the thing they found that shocked them was that everyone had a lower life expectancy in heavily Republican states. That is, if you compared people with others of similar socioeconomic backgrounds in Democratic states, they alwayshad a lower life expectancy. It's not surprising that a poor people in a Republican-controlled state would die younger than poor people in a Democratic-controlled state. But it's very surprising that rich people in Republican states have a shorter life expectancy than rich people in Democratic states. The gap is smaller! but still there. And rich people can afford good healthcare no matter where they are; they can also afford not to live near environmental disasters. The people who ran the study had no clue what the factors were, but hadn't managed to come up with the funding to do a follow-up study to try and figure out why.