The states that hate Obamacare are least responsible

http://content.ksg.harvard.edu/blog/jeff_frankels_weblog/2012/10/04/sinners-red-states-blue-states/

By Jeffrey Frankel / September 6, 2012

The states [whose congressional delegations voted against] Obamacare are the states where people are least likely to take personal responsibility for their health in their daily behavior.' Those states have high incidences of obesity, drunk driving, smoking, shootings, poor eating habits, poor exercise habits, teen pregnancy, and sexual transmitted disease.

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The vote was strongly against health reform among the congressional delegations from Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, and Missouri. These tend to be some of the states with the highest rates of obesity, teenage pregnancy, drunk-driving fatalities, and firearms assaults in the country.

The reverse is true among many of the state delegations that voted for Obamacare: Colorado, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Hawaii, New York, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and California.

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http://content.ksg.harvard.edu/blog/jeff_frankels_weblog/2012/10/04/sinners-red-states-blue-states/

Oct 4th, 2012 by Jeff Frankels

Mitt Romney, presidential candidate, said in now-infamous comments that 47% of the American electorate is dependent on the federal government, that he will never be able to teach them to take personal responsibility for their lives, and that they are certain to vote for Barack Obama in November. He continues a tradition in his party that goes back at least three decades: building political campaigns around the proposition that folks in the heartland exhibit the American virtues of self sufficiency and personal responsibility and the implication that other, more urban, regions display decadent social values and dependency on government.

It is a good general rule to judge individuals on their own merits and not on the supposed attributes of the racial, socioeconomic or geographic groups to which they belong. Cultural generalizations are dangerous. But since questions have been raised, the fearless social scientist will not shrink from confronting them. Are residents of “red states,” who tend to vote Republican, indeed more likely to take responsibility for their personal behavior than those who live in “blue states” and tend to vote Democratic?

Inspired by the role that religion plays in the red-state view of the world, I will organize the investigation in terms of the Seven Deadly Sins: Greed, Gluttony, Lust, Sloth, Wrath, and so on. We will see that measures of these “sins,” state-by-state, bear a statistical relationship with voting patterns - but not the relationship that many assume. (For data sources and econometric details, see the statistical appendix at my website.)

1) Greed

The red states receive more federal spending, relative to taxes, than the blue states, as I wrote in a 2010 blog post. Updated data show that the pattern continues. Those who claim to be fiscally conservative are the ones who in truth tend to feed the most voraciously at the federal trough. Alaskans are the most dependent on the federal government, receiving $7,448 in spending (net of taxes) per capita.

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2) Gluttony

States where residents suffer more from obesity, in part because they have worse eating habits, tend to vote Republican

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3) Sloth

States where residents get less physical exercise tend to vote Republican. (Figure 10d in appendix.) The relationship is highly significant statistically.

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4) Lust

Sex is interesting. Red states residents buy more online adult entertainment, according to a 2009 study in the Journal of Economic Perspectives by Benjamin Edelman. Notwithstanding proclamations about the importance of pre-marital chastity, evidence suggests that young people in red states do have sex before marriage. It is less likely to be safe sex than among those in blue states. States that vote Republican have higher birth rates among 15-17-year-old girls, as Figure 4 shows. Again, the difference is highly significant statistically. They also have higher rates of the sexually-transmitted disease Chlamydia . (This difference, unlike the others, is not statistically significant at the aggregate state level; but it is when combined into an overall measure of unsafe sex.)

Apparently the gap between what they say and what they do is particularly wide for teen-agers who describe themselves as evangelical Christians. According to research by Mark Regnerus, a sociologist at the University of Texas, Austin, white evangelical adolescents usually state a belief in pre-marital abstinence — 74 per cent — but in fact are surprisingly active sexually, compared to mainline Protestants and Jews who do not tend to state such a belief. When the evangelicals do engage in sex, they are less likely to use protection than others. The gap between word and deed is strikingly high for the millions of teenagers who take a formal pledge to remain celibate until marriage, typically in a ring ceremony, according to a New Yorker article by Margaret Talbott (”Red Sex, Blue Sex“). The majority of them, though holding out for awhile, “end up having sex before marriage, and not usually with their future spouse.” Two other sociologists, Peter Bearman (Columbia University) and Hannah Bruckner (Yale) find a positive correlation between the abstinence pledge and Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD). Pledgers are less likely to use a condom if and when they first have sex and overall are slightly more likely to contract a STD.

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5) Wrath

Nobody is surprised to hear that red states have higher rates of gun ownership than blue states. But there is an important distinction between those who use guns responsibly and those who do not. The data show that ¾ of the states with high rates of firearms assaults vote Republican. (Figure 5.) The regression is statistically significant.

6) Drunkenness

People who drink too much endanger themselves and endanger others as well. You guessed it: States with high rates of fatal accidents from drunk driving tend to vote Republican (Figure 6). Statistically significant.

7) Smoking

Finally, states with high rates of smoking vote Republican too, as Figure 7 illustrates. Again, the relationship is highly significant statistically.

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