TY - JOUR
T1 - U.S. State Policy Contexts and Physical Health among Midlife Adults
AU - Kemp, Blakelee R.
AU - Grumbach, Jacob M.
AU - Montez, Jennifer Karas
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported in part by the National Institute on Aging (grants R01AG055481 and R24AG045061) and the Carnegie Corporation of New York (grant G-F-18-56197). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health or the Carnegie Corporation.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2022.
PY - 2022/4
Y1 - 2022/4
N2 - The authors examine how state policy contexts may have contributed to unfavorable adult health in recent decades, using merged individual-level data from the 1993–2016 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (n = 2,166,835) and 15 state-level policy domains measured annually on a conservative-to-liberal continuum. The authors examine associations between policy domains and health among adults 45 to 64 years old and assess how much of the associations are accounted for by adults’ socioeconomic, behavioral and lifestyle, and family factors. A more liberal version of the civil rights domain was associated with better health. It was disproportionately important for less educated adults and women, and its association with adult health was partly accounted for by educational attainment, employment, and income. Environment, gun safety, and marijuana policy domains were, to a lesser degree, predictors of health in some model specifications. In sum, health improvements require a greater focus on macro-level factors that shape the conditions in which people live.
AB - The authors examine how state policy contexts may have contributed to unfavorable adult health in recent decades, using merged individual-level data from the 1993–2016 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (n = 2,166,835) and 15 state-level policy domains measured annually on a conservative-to-liberal continuum. The authors examine associations between policy domains and health among adults 45 to 64 years old and assess how much of the associations are accounted for by adults’ socioeconomic, behavioral and lifestyle, and family factors. A more liberal version of the civil rights domain was associated with better health. It was disproportionately important for less educated adults and women, and its association with adult health was partly accounted for by educational attainment, employment, and income. Environment, gun safety, and marijuana policy domains were, to a lesser degree, predictors of health in some model specifications. In sum, health improvements require a greater focus on macro-level factors that shape the conditions in which people live.
KW - U.S. state policies
KW - health disparities
KW - population health
KW - social determinants of health
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U2 - 10.1177/23780231221091324
DO - 10.1177/23780231221091324
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85129250015
SN - 2378-0231
VL - 8
JO - Socius
JF - Socius
ER -