Conservatives are dying at higher rates than liberals | Hacker News Reader

Conservatives are dying at higher rates than liberals

fastcompany.com

12 pointsceejayoz14 comments

The dying gap doesn't have much effect at child bearing ages. The fertility gap is between between ~2.1 for conservatives (roughly replacement) and ~1.5 for liberals. To maintain political equilibrium liberals have to outpace conservatives in conversions or immigrants, or make more babies.

Political leanings aren’t genetic

Families transmit values via memes rather than genes. Politics is a meme competition and conservatives have a 2.1/1.5 advantage in reproducing meme transmitters. So without other interventions, liberals need about a 29% advantage in meme effectiveness for parity.

I reject my parents values, it does transmit with certainty. The rise of Trumpism has coincided with a rise in estrangement

But the memes that pass are more abstract, for example individual liberty. The modern application of that will lead to very different conclusions than parents came to during their time. Especially when you factor in the wacky paths modern cult-esque media tends to lead people down, and their kids getting to see the culmination of that.

Plus this "liberal vs conservative" dichotomy fell apart with the Republican party being taken over by destructive reactionaries. So personally as I've gotten older I've definitely gotten more conservative, but that has contributed to me voting Democrat rather than my previous Libertarian or overt protest vote.

There are some studies, such as twin and adoption studies, suggesting genetics plays a role: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4038932/

nor are they stable in definition or constituents

Absolutely is to some extent, research strongly suggests it's brain structure, specifically around the amygdala. Facial structure can also be used as a predicator.

Conservative and Liberal Brains Might Have Some Real Differences - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/conservative-and-... - October 26th, 2020

Kosinski, M., Khambatta, P., & Wang, Y. (2024). Facial recognition technology and human raters can predict political orientation from images of expressionless faces even when controlling for demographics and self-presentation. American Psychologist, 79(7), 942–955. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001295

Rasmussen SHR, Ludeke SG, Klemmensen R. Using deep learning to predict ideology from facial photographs: expressions, beauty, and extra-facial information. Sci Rep. 2023 Mar 31;13(1):5257. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-31796-1 PMID: 37002240; PMCID: PMC10066183.

Pedersen WS, Muftuler LT, Larson CL. Conservatism and the neural circuitry of threat: economic conservatism predicts greater amygdala-BNST connectivity during periods of threat vs safety. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2018 Jan 1;13(1):43-51. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsx133 PMID: 29126127; PMCID: PMC5793824.

Haas, I.J., Baker, M.N. & Gonzalez, F.J. Who Can Deviate from the Party Line? Political Ideology Moderates Evaluation of Incongruent Policy Positions in Insula and Anterior Cingulate Cortex. Soc Just Res 30, 355–380 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-017-0295-0

Kanai R, Feilden T, Firth C ... Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure in Young Adults Current Biology, 2011; 21, 677-680 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2011.03.017

I think the more interesting question is: are we, as a species, evolving away from conservatism centric biology over time? Or is it because we stopped putting lead into the environment? Because you can see the generational cohort differences over time.

Gen Z women are the most liberal group in the country - https://19thnews.org/2025/10/gen-z-women-politics/ - October 7th, 2025

Exploring Young Women's Leftward Expansion - https://news.gallup.com/poll/649826/exploring-young-women-le... - September 12th, 2024

Pew Research: Age, generational cohorts and party identification - https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/age-generati... - April 9th, 2024

Tangentially, I strongly believe this is related to why US religions are losing members with every generational cohort. This is covered in the below https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com posts, but unfortunately, they are paid and I don't have a way to unlock to share them. I will inquire with the author if I can compensate them to unlock these specific references.

This is Not Simple Generational Replacement - https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/can-millennials-save-t... - April 23rd, 2026

When Are Half Your Members Going to be Dead? - https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/when-are-half-your-mem... - January 29th, 2026

The Generational Collapse of American Religion - https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/the-generational-colla... - January 19th, 2026

The Politics of Religion - https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/510464/polit... - September 1st, 2023 (“Everything else being equal, the more religious the individual in the U.S. today, the higher the probability that the individual identifies with or leans toward the Republican party. I called this the “R and R rule” in my 2012 book on religion, found the phenomenon alive and well in my 2014 review of Gallup data, and now, nine years later, Gallup’s data confirm that this religiosity gap is more evident than ever.“)

TLDR Brain structure->Politics and Religious Belief System

The impulse to “counter” this statistic as part of an imagined debate over who’s “winning” is likely to be driving this public health issue, yes.

By 2016, the gap had begun to appear in biomarker measures. By 2020, it was showing up in deaths from causes such as heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Since then, the gap has only widened. Between 2020 and 2022, only 0.2% of “very liberal” respondents died of internal causes, compared with 1.34% of “very conservative” respondents.

That's what happens when knee-jerk opposition to any form of expertise becomes a core tenant of a political philosophy. Conservatives in America have largely rejected the idea that reality is objective and knowable through applied observation and logic. Instead they choose to live in bubbles, believing known falsehoods like the idea that the Covid vaccine is worse than covid, or that vegetables are for pussies and real men only eat red meat.

I guess the idea is if we just force women to have enough children, it will all even out...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism

And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing.

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