It’s your civic duty — and maybe your fountain of youth.
While there’s already a body of research showing the health benefits of altruistic acts like volunteering, scientists wanted to see if there were any protective health outcomes associated with casting a ballot.
People who voted in the 2008 presidential election for any candidate had a lower early mortality risk than those who abstained. Burlingham – stock.adobe.com Specifically, the researchers analyzed health data tied to the 2008 presidential election. They looked at who voted and who didn’t to assess each person’s risk of dying over the next five, 10 and 15 years.
Older adults who voted in 2008 had a much less early mortality risk — it was 45% lower after five years. But the biggest winners were those who were already in poorer health when they voted — they were still benefiting from the act 15 years later.
Femida Handy, lead author and professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice, said the results weren’t explained by a participant’s wallet size, education, civic engagement or political party.
Even when their candidate loses, voters still have lower odds of dying in the subsequent years.
The benefits of voting didn’t appear to be limited to in-person engagement, either.
“We were surprised to find that people who voted either in person or remotely experienced these benefits,” Handy said.
“This suggests that voting itself is more important than the method of voting or even who they voted for. The potential long-lasting benefits of voting as individuals age make this information crucial for promoting voter turnout, in line with the American Medical Association recommendations.”
Voting, volunteering, providing childcare and gardening are recommended activities for optimal health as we age. Past studies on voting behavior found that a person’s health status often indicates if they vote early or later. This study aimed to understand the flip side of that coin, to see if voting behavior could actually predict older Americans’ premature mortality risk.
There are other less direct ways that voting can impact human health, too.
In 2024, the American Heart Association (AHA) — which cheekily notes that “the act of voting is at the heart of a healthy democracy” — published an article about the role of voting in health outcomes and health’s impact on who votes and when.
“Experts on this back-and-forth say the connections are a weave of cultural, political and other factors that studies are just starting to unravel,” the author wrote.
Ultimately, they argue, voting access shouldn’t just be a priority for voting rights advocates — it should be a priority shared by health care professionals, too.
Researchers have explained this health-voting “loop” before: Individual health can impact a person’s baseline ability to vote. Voting directly influences public policy. And public policy has health consequences, both positive and negative.
The AHA noted that “voting affects things such as access to parks, construction of safe sidewalks and other public policies that affect health.”
When white women won the right to vote in 1920, for example, elected officials were suddenly accountable to their public health concerns. As a result, the number of child deaths tumbled by up to 15%, per a 2008 report in the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
In general, staying engaged into old age has numerous proven health benefits. Hobbies like gardening, crafting and cooking can slow cognitive decline. And maintaining social connections and community bonds — through volunteering, babysitting and, yes, voting — can be important for heart health.
Not to mention you get a fun little sticker. Win-win-win.
