Venue: The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, 1 Towerview Drive, Durham, NC 27708-0120
Presentation
Social Status and Mortality: Evidence from US Elections
Across societies, time and space, a consistent strong positive correlation has been documented between socio-economic status and longevity. It has proven difficult to determine not only whether there is a causal relationship between components of socio-economic status (e.g., income and education) and mortality, but also, to explain the pathways through which these variables impact health. Some research suggests that it is actually social status that provides enhanced longevity. Results from the Whitehall study and more recently from reports comparing Oscar and Nobel winners with nominees have provided some evidence pointing towards this hypothesis, although some of these results have been proven to be fragile.
This paper examines the impact of social status on longevity by comparing post- election mortality rates for winners and losers in contested gubernatorial and senatorial elections in the United States. We focus on tight races because in these contests, there is an important role of luck which makes the assignment of the winner close to being randomly assigned. An additional advantage of focusing on tight races, relative to including all races, is that the resulting sample contains only a few candidates that participate in multiple elections making the definition of the treatment and control groups sharper.
The sample includes the top two contenders in gubernatorial and senatorial races in the United States between 1900 and 1960 in which the winner received between 50 and 55 percent of the total votes received by these two candidates. Data on elections used in the study was obtained from the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research data set Candidates and Constituency of Elections in the United States, 1788-1990. Information from a number of web sources was used to construct candidates' lifespan but key sources include the Political Graveyard, the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress and the Biography and Genealogy Master Index.
The project is ongoing and at this point it is not possible to foresee its conclusions. Nevertheless, very preliminary results seem to indicate a protective effect of winning a contested election on longevity.