Voting, a simple civil act? No, believe a large study conducted by the University of Helsinki, in Finland. According to the latter, voting would also be an important social determinant, a key indicator of a person’s health and longevity. Better yet, a person’s participation in elections will be a predictive factor in their death rate, even more so than their level of education.
For the study, the researchers cross-referenced data from Finland’s 1999 parliamentary elections with official records from Statistics Finland, which records detailed information on demographics, education, income and causes of death. The sample studied included 3,185,500 people, followed for… more than twenty years! Broom.
The less we choose, the more we die
During this period, 1,053,483 deaths were recorded, of which 95,350 were due to external causes (accidents, violence or alcohol-related deaths) and 955,723 were due to other underlying causes. The data used by scientists found surprising results.
The conclusion is clear: abstaining is accompanied by a much higher risk of death. Men who do not vote have a 73% higher risk of death from all causes than voters, while for women this excess risk reaches 63%. Even after taking into account education level, the gap remains large, namely +64% for men and +59% for women.
Even more surprising, the difference in death rates between voters and abstainers exceeds the difference between people with less education and those with higher diplomas. This suggests that the fact of voting seems to be an almost more decisive social indicator of health than level of education, even though this is firmly rooted in the social sciences.
Links are not causation
Other results complement these observations, especially based on age and income. For example, in men under 50 years of age, the risk of death in the non-voter group is twice as high as in the voter group. In terms of income, the findings were more or less the same: among men in the lowest household group, abstainers had a 9 to 12% higher risk of death compared to men in the highest income group.
What should we conclude from this? First of all, these results should be taken with a pinch of salt. This was an observational study, which does not allow for a direct cause-and-effect relationship. Many structural barriers can also influence election participation, such as mobility difficulties, social isolation or economic insecurity.
As the researchers themselves explain, the results of their study open new avenues of reflection, tracing new avenues of analysis that future research should explore to determine the extent to which voting is a valuable marker for understanding health disparities.
In short, this research opens a new perspective: voting can be a relevant indicator for identifying health disparities, and future research can deepen this relationship to understand its full mechanisms.
