Working Paper: NBER ID: w30512
Authors: Jacob Wallace; Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham; Jason L. Schwartz
Abstract: Political affiliation has emerged as a potential risk factor for COVID-19, amid evidence that Republican-leaning counties have had higher COVID-19 death rates than Democrat- leaning counties and evidence of a link between political party affiliation and vaccination views. This study constructs an individual-level dataset with political affiliation and excess death rates during the COVID-19 pandemic via a linkage of 2017 voter registration in Ohio and Florida to mortality data from 2018 to 2021. We estimate substantially higher excess death rates for registered Republicans when compared to registered Democrats, with almost all of the difference concentrated in the period after vaccines were widely available in our study states. Overall, the excess death rate for Republicans was 5.4 percentage points (pp), or 76%, higher than the excess death rate for Democrats. Post- vaccines, the excess death rate gap between Republicans and Democrats widened from 1.6 pp (22% of the Democrat excess death rate) to 10.4 pp (153% of the Democrat excess death rate). The gap in excess death rates between Republicans and Democrats is concentrated in counties with low vaccination rates and only materializes after vaccines became widely available.
Keywords: COVID-19; excess death rates; political affiliation; vaccination; public health
JEL Codes: I0
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Political affiliation (D72) | Excess death rates (J11) |
| Vaccination uptake (I19) | Excess death rates (J11) |
| Political affiliation + Vaccination uptake (D72) | Excess death rates (J11) |
| Low vaccination rates (I19) | Excess death rates (J11) |
| Political affiliation (D72) | Gap in excess death rates (I14) |