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As a rule, one should judge people on their merits, not onthe supposed attributes of the racial,socioeconomic, or geographic groups to which they belong. Yet statisticalrelationships sometimes are so strong that it is worth ponderingtheir significance.
In the United States,a distinction is frequently drawn between citizens of “redstates,” which usually vote for the Republican Party, and those of “blue states” – concentrated in the Northeast, theupper Midwest, and the Pacific coast – whichusually vote for the Democratic Party.
The unspoken truth is that, compared to “blue-staters,”those who live in red states exhibit less responsibility, on average, in theirpersonal behavior: they are less physically fit, less careful in their sexualbehavior, more prone to inflict harm on themselves and others through smokingand drinking, and more likely to receive federal subsidies.
Statisticalanalysis shows that states where more residents suffer from obesity,often because they get less physicalexercise and eat more junk food, tendto vote Republican. To illustrate, a mere 1% decrease in a state’s obesity onaverage is estimated to raise the ratio of Democratic to Republican voters from1.00 to 1.07, easily enough to swing anelection.
Similarly, states with high pregnancy rates among girlsaged 15-17 tend to vote Republican. Again, the relationship is highlysignificant statistically. Evidently, people in New England,New York, and Hawaii, who more often vote Democratic, arenot just slimmer, but are also less prone toengage in unprotectedsex than those in the South and Republican-leaning Midwestern states.States with highrates of cigarette smoking also vote Republican, as do states with highrates of fatal accidents from drunkdriving.
The average score of the five “reddest” states (Wyoming, Oklahoma, Utah, Idaho, and Alaska) is worse on each of six measures ofirresponsibility than the average score of the five “bluest” (New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont,and Hawaii):more obesity, smoking, chlamydia, teenagepregnancy, drunk-driving fatalities, and firearms assaults. In the latter three measures,the “reckless” share of the population isalmost twice as high among the reddeststates as it is among the bluest.
The states that score worst on these measures are also thestates whose congressional representatives voted against Obama’s Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) in 2010, thoughmany of these unhealthypeople free-ride on their fellow citizens when they show up uninsured in hospital emergency rooms. Thatpolitical hypocrisy comes at a price:obese Americans incur medical costs that are42% higher than those of normal-weight Americans.
Figure 1 combines all of these variables into a singlemeasure of personal behavior, state by state, with citizens of states on the left-handside behaving more irresponsibly. The vertical dimension shows the ratio ofDemocratic to Republican votes in the 2008 presidential election. The overallrelationship, again, is statistically significant: those with the leastresponsible behavior are the most likely to vote Republican.
Policy wonks have longknown that one gets similar results when looking at whichstates receive more federal subsidies: Despite all the rhetoric about“getting the government off our backs,” the red states receive the most federaltransfers, with Alaska, Mississippi,Louisiana, West Virginia,and the Dakotastopping the list. Democratic-leaning states – especially New York, New Jersey,California, and the New England states – are net contributors to the federal budget, andthus subsidize everyone else. Those whoclaim to be most fiscallyconservative in fact tend to feed most voraciouslyat the public trough.
Blue-state residents, who tend to be more educated and havehigher incomes than residents of red states, haverefrained from suggesting that their red-states compatriotsexhibit behavior that falls short of theconservative rhetoric of personal responsibility. It would be unseemly and perhaps “elitist”to point fingers at fellow Americans andimply that they are promiscuous, fat,gluttonous, lazy,uneducated,or that they are moreprone to divorce,drunkeness,and gun-relateddeaths.
Fortunately, the conservative political scientist CharlesMurray points out some of these statistics in his latest book, Coming Apart. Murray argues that thoseliving in the “super-zip codes” – areas withhigh levels of income and education, such as Belmont, Massachusetts – havemaintained the traditional American values of hard work and family values.Those who live elsewhere have shown “crashing”rates of industriousness and marriage.
Indeed, according to Murray,they leave the labor force, often falselyclaiming disability. They “goof off,” “sleeping and watching television.”Those with jobs have reduced their working hours, while those living in thesuper-zip codes have increased theirs. The proportion of children born out of wedlock has skyrocketedfor women who did not finish high school, to more than 60%, which is more than 12 times the rate among women who finish college.(Murray’sstatistics are based on whites alone, to control for race.)
For Murray,however, the blame lies with those living in the super-zip codes: “The newupper class still does a good job of practicing some of the virtues, but it no longer preachesthem. It preaches nonjudgmentalism instead.”So the problem is “an unwillingness on thepart of any significant portion of the new upperclass to preach what they practice.”
That is a stunning argument, especially coming from aconservative/libertarian. What about themillions of red-state Americans who have been preaching hard work, familyvalues, self-reliance, and small government, while practicing the opposite?Surely this is the more objectionable stance. Yet, for red-state politicians, this hypocrisy has been a winning electoral strategy for three decades.
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