Partisan Gerrymandering and Infant Mortality

• In Event: Politics and Population Processes

Abstract

In the past ten years, gerrymandering has gained more public attention than ever before, with scholars and activists alike calling for more rigorous empirical research into the topic. Empirical research on partisan gerrymandering to date is sparse; to the extent that it exists, it is primarily concerned with the consequences of gerrymandering for elections, governing bodies, and political parties. However, a large range of possible downstream consequences of partisan gerrymandering remain understudied, both within and outside of the political sphere. The current paper situates partisan gerrymandering in the broader framework of structural determinants of health and asks: Does gerrymandering, and the dilution of political power that it represents, result in tangible differences in infant health? I use a measure developed by legal scholars to quantify gerrymandering, called the efficiency gap; in preliminary results from two-way fixed effects models, I show that increasing values of the efficiency gap – that is, gerrymandering to the advantage of Republicans – results in increases in infant mortality rates for both White and Black infants. This effect persists even after controlling for current partisanship, suggesting that Republican gerrymandering impacts infant mortality through other pathways in addition to changing the partisan composition of state legislatures to be more Republican.

Author

• AP Pittman, Duke University