Four days after the elections and it seems that the time has come to deal with the following fascinating question: Why do politicians around the world tend to live longer than the general population?
A new study published on the Walla website shows that at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, politicians in most of the countries analyzed in the study tended to have mortality rates similar to the general population. However, throughout the 20th century, the differences in mortality rates increased greatly in all countries. This means that the “survival advantage” of politicians over the general population is currently the highest it has been in the last 150 years.
The findings come from a new study by the University of Oxford recently published in the European Journal of Epidemiology. The researchers reached their conclusion after examining data on more than 57,500 politicians from 11 countries, including Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
What is the gap in question? Currently, the life expectancy gap ranges from about 3 years in Switzerland to 7 years in the USA. Meanwhile, a typical person in the general public in Italy is 2.2 times more likely to die in the next year than a politician of the same age and gender. In New Zealand this figure is 1.2 times.
What is the explanation for this?
Several factors are believed to underlie this very clear trend. For example, there were high rates of smoking in the first half of the 20th century, even among the upper class. However, numbers have been declining since the 1950s. Perhaps, the study hypothesizes, smoking rates have fallen faster among politicians than among the general public, which partially explains the life expectancy gaps that have grown in many countries after 1950.
Alternatively, it may have something to do with heart health. Politicians tend to have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease than other people, but these conditions have been more easily treated since antihypertensive drugs became widely available in the 1960s.
Another big component – and perhaps the most obvious – is wealth and economic inequality. Politicians earn significantly higher salaries than the average population, which brings clear benefits to longevity and health. Nevertheless, the researchers argue that this factor is not as prominent as it might first appear, as inequality began to rise in the 1980s, but differences in life expectancy began to widen decades earlier.