ABSTRACT
The CDC lists many behaviors as risky: cigarette smoking, driving while under the influence, unsafe sex, eating more calories than are expended, sedentary habits, violence, substance abuse, and many others that result in injury or death to the practitioner or others. This chapter analyzes the differences between the Donald Trump- and Clinton-voting states with respect to incidence or prevalence of selected behaviors and the socioeconomic factors associated with them. Alcohol has been a ‘lubricant’ for most societies on earth for millennia and may have a special place in behavior, unlike tobacco. Homicide carries the deepest stigma of all the risk behaviors. Because of the presence of a dead body with clear signs of violence or unnatural death, homicide is also one of the least likely of the risk behaviors to go unreported. The index of risk behavior is calculated as follows: For each of seven risk behaviors, each states incidence/prevalence is normalized by the median for the 50 states.
