Political Ideology Direction of Policy Agendas and Maternal Mortality Outcomes in the U.S., 1915-2007.

Objectives: The causes for persistently high and increasing maternal mortality rates in the United States have been elusive.

Methods: We use the shift in the ideological direction of the Republican and the Democratic parties in the 1960s, to test the hypothesis that fluctuations in overall and race-specific maternal mortality rates (MMR) follow the power shifts between the parties before and after the Political Realignment (PR) of the 1960s.

Results: Using time-series data analysis methods, we find that, net of trend, overall and race-specific MMRs were higher under Democratic administrations than Republican ones before the PR (1915-1965)-i.

The Political Realignment of Health: How Partisan Power Shaped Infant Health in the United States, 1915-2017.

The US two-party system was transformed in the 1960s when the Democratic Party abandoned its Jim Crow protectionism to incorporate the policy agenda fostered by the civil rights movement, and the Republican Party redirected its platform toward socioeconomic and racial conservatism. The authors argue that the policy agendas promoted by the two parties through presidents and state legislatures codify a racially patterned access to resources and power detrimental to the health of all. To test the hypothesis that fluctuations in overall and race-specific infant mortality rates (IMRs) shift between the parties in power before and after the political realignment (PR), the authors apply panel data analysis methods to state-level data from the National Center for Health Statistics for the period 1915 through 2017.