Newsweek - Voting behavior in elections and an individual’s future risk of death have a "strong association." In fact, it’s a stronger determinant of mortality than education, according to researchers from the University of Helsinki in Finland.
While voting in national and local elections has already been recognized as a social determinant of health—with voters generally thought to have better health profiles than non-voters—the link between electoral participation and death has not been established.
With this in mind, the researchers analysed data on participation in the 1999 Finnish parliamentary elections and associated registers by Statistics Finland containing sociodemographic and mortality information....
The study included more than 3,185,500 people (with voter turnout of 71.5 percent among men and 72.5 percent among women), tracking their survival from election day on March 21, 1999 to the day of death or the end of 2020, whichever came first.
In total, 1,053,483 people died; 95,350 deaths from external causes (accidents, violent and alcohol-attributable causes), and 955,723 from other underlying causes. 2,410 people whose cause of death was not known were excluded from the final analysis.
Not voting was consistently associated with a 73 percent heightened risk of death from any cause among men and a 63 percent heightened risk of death among women, the researchers discovered.
After adjusting for their education level, this was reduced to a 64 percent heightened risk among men and a 59 percent heightened risk among women.
The difference in mortality between non-voters and voters was stronger than between those with basic and higher education. These differences were strongest for external causes of death and for younger age groups.
When adjusting for age, the risk of death was twice as high among both men and women who did not vote than it was among those who did.
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