Evangelicals and death rates

 From James Gundlach

Here is a scatter plot of the percent Evangelical in 2004 and the state's population aged 45-64 death rate from 2001 thru 2010. The scatter plot and regression statistics summarized in the title show that Evangelicalism substantially increases death rates in the United States.

The US is a nice test bed for analysis and policy, because it has 50 States, which have significant powers, so can follow different policies, plus 50 is a big enough number for the results of any analysis to be statistically significant.

In this case, I'm not sure whether there is correlation with a third variable. Possibly, poverty is strongly correlated with the level of fundamentalist Christianity. Poorer States will most likely have higher mortality rates, and (inexplicably to someone from outside the US) also be adherents of extreme religion. In other countries, the poor support socialist parties and policies (free health; fair wages; social housing; trade unions). In the US, religion and the hope of Heaven take their place. The poorest States in America are almost without exception "Red" States and the only ones which aren't poor are oil States. Even the use of Red as the colour for the Republican Party is odd. In the rest of the world, Red = socialist/progressive, and Blue = right-wing/conservative/regressive.

Whatever the reason behind the relationship, its existence is remarkable.