The relationship between health and political ideology begins in childhood: Healthy children more likely to express conservative ideology as older adults, independent of personality, academics, and later-life heath

The relationship between health and political ideology begins in childhood. Viji Diane Kannan et al. SSM - Population Health, August 24 2022, 101214. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2022.101214

Highlights

• Healthy children more likely to express conservative ideology as older adults.

• Independent of personality, academics, and later-life heath.

• Association driven by children with better health.

• Childhood health may be mediating social forces to produce adult ideology.

Abstract: We investigate whether childhood health status influences adult political ideology and whether health at subsequent life-stages, adolescent personality traits, or adolescent academic aptitude mediate this relationship. Using a national longitudinal cohort sample, we found that better health among children under age 10 was positively related to conservative political ideology among adults over age 64. Children with excellent health compared to very poor health were 16 percentage points more likely to report having a conservative political ideology in adulthood. Children with excellent health compared to very poor health were 13 percentage points less likely to report having a liberal political ideology in adulthood. Adults who had excellent health as children were 30 percentage points more likely to report conservative ideology than liberal ideology. However, the difference in ideological position for adults who had very poor childhood health was negligible. That is, the health and ideology relationship is being driven by those who were healthier early in life, after controlling for family income and material wealth. No evidence was found for mediation by adolescent heath, adult heath, adolescent personality traits, or adolescent academic aptitude. The magnitude of the coefficient for childhood health was substantively and statistically equivalent across race and sex. We discuss the possibility that, instead of being mediated, childhood health may actually be a mediator bridging social, environmental, and policy contexts with political ideology. We also discuss the potential of social policy to influence health, which influences ideology (and voting participation), which eventually circles back to influence social policy. It is important to understand the nexus of political life and population health since disparities in voice and power can exacerbate health disparities.

Keywords Life-courseSelf-rated health statusPolitical ideology

4. Discussion

Political science research indicates that the impressionable formative years for political socialization begin early in life during childhood and that ideological expression can be influenced by childhood stimuli such as trauma, friendships, and new experiences. We show that one such early life contributor is health. We expand on recent evidence linking health to political partisanship. Party politics changes over time. We focused on ideology which more strongly relates to policy stances and political beliefs as well as conceptions of how the world operates and a variety of individual preferences (e.g., grammar, humor, art, room decorations) (Carney et al., 2008; Cichocka, Bilewicz, Jost, Marrouch, & Witkowska, 2016; Glasgow, Cartier, & Wilson, 1985; Jost, Nosek, & Gosling, 2008; Wilson, 1990; Wilson, Ausman, & Mathews, 1973). Ideology not only informs people's electoral choices, but how they conduct their lives.

We show that the relationship between health and ideology begins in childhood. And, our results provide no evidence that childhood health is mediated by health at subsequent life-stages. Adolescent and adult health have no relation to adult political ideology independent of childhood health. Childhood is, thus, a sensitive period for the relationship between health and ideology.

We also show that the relationship between health and ideology endures over nearly six decades, potentially influencing a lifetime of electoral decisions. Thus, the impact of local physical, social, and policy environments on childhood health could have lasting implications for the ideological composition of those local electorates.

We proposed that adolescent personality and academics could mediated the health and ideology relationship. However, our findings do not show statistically significant mediation of childhood health through these adolescent characteristics as a whole. Nonetheless, the Vigor and Maturity personality traits individually served as mediators, although in opposing directions. Vigor was related to conservative ideology while Maturity was related to liberal ideology. Another explanation for the lack of mediation might also be that suggested by behavioral genetics research, which has shown that rather than personality contributing to ideology, both ideology and personality derive from a common underlying heritable latent factor (Hatemi & Verhulst, 2015; Verhulst, Eaves, & Hatemi, 2012). Similarly, since health is heritable, researchers have proposed that health may also partly derive from genetic factors giving rise to personality and ideology (Pacheco & Fletcher, 2015).

Adults who had excellent childhood health were 30 percentage points more likely to identify with conservative ideology than to identify with liberal ideology. However, the difference in ideological position for adults who had very poor childhood health was negligible. That is, the health and ideology relationship is being driven by those who began life with an advantaged health position, even controlling for early life family income and material wealth. From very poor to excellent childhood health, the probability of adult conservative ideology monotonically increases and liberal ideology monotonically decreases.

These results occur in the context of a longitudinal cohort analysis. Project Talent participants were high schoolers in 1960. The age range was ten years. Most participants were very close in age, within a four-year range, with fewer students in the younger and older tails. Students hailed from small rural towns and big cities and differed in their economic, cultural, and social backgrounds (American Institutes for Research (AIR) (2016). This cohort witnessed the same national and cultural events during childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood — school desegregation, civil rights, labor rights, Medicare/Medicaid, two wars, various protests, various assassinations, etc. The distribution of health levels and the distribution of ideological positions likely differs for this generation compared to recent generations. At a minimum, other generations are expected to differ in intercept and slope. Thus, we acknowledge the specificity of our study's findings to the Baby Boomer generation. We encourage the use of data from other generations in future studies to elucidate the health and ideology relationship under different social, economic, and cultural conditions.

In addition to being from one cohort, our sample was between 63 and 74 years of age. One concern with a sample of older adults is that of growing conservatism with age. However, studies have shown that ideology tends to be stable across the life-span (Sears & Brown, 2013; Sears & Funk, 1999) and that persons aging beyond young adulthood and middle age have tended to become more liberal in many respects (Glenn, 1974). Americans of this age group express a mix of conservative and liberal positions regarding trust in government, trust in big business and markets, support for social programs, and support for marginalized groups (Desilver, 2014). However, larger percentages hold consistently liberal or consistently conservative views (Desilver, 2014). Our findings may not hold across the globe in countries where economic and social conservatism are uncorrelated or even negatively correlated. Studies using data from other countries would illuminate more of the health and ideology relationship under different ideological dynamics. Another consideration with this age group is that of mortality selection over the nearly six decades between PT60 and PTPS12. While mortality is likely higher among unhealthy participants, still the distribution of health levels in PTPS12 was not heavily skewed toward healthy participants and showed a general decline of health with age. Furthermore, frequencies at all levels of childhood and adolescent health are similar for the total PT60 sample and the PTPS12 sample.

Other limitations require consideration as well. Measurement of childhood health was retrospective, although made by adolescents only a few years older. Prior work suggests such reports are reliable, even taken at far later points in the lifespan (Haas, 2007). Our sample is largely white. Black and white Americans who were adolescents in the 1960s experienced their country and political power differently over the six decades captured in this longitudinal cohort study. However, we found that there was little substantive and no statistical difference between black participants, white participants, and the sample as a whole.

A major limitation is the lack of data over potentially important life stages during the lengthy period between high school and one's late 60s. While Project Talent follow-up surveys were conducted in the 1960s and 1970s, unfortunately, participants from those surveys have virtually no overlap with PTPS12. Thus, we are unable to conduct a detailed study of life-course paths or intervening experiences. This study is ideal, however, for examining links between a formative early period and later-life ideology. We are not aware of any other study analyzing the association between health and any political outcome over such a long time period.