Dimensional reduction occurs when the critical behavior of one system can be related to that of another system in a lower dimension. We show that this occurs for directed branched polymers (DBP) by giving an exact relationship between DBP models in $D+1$ dimensions and repulsive gases at negative activity in $D$ dimensions. This implies relations between exponents of the two models: $\gamma(D+1)=\alpha(D)$ (the exponent describing the singularity of the pressure), and $\nu_{\perp}(D+1)=\nu(D)$ (the correlation length exponent of the repulsive gas). It also leads to the relation $\theta(D+1)=1+\sigma(D)$, where $\sigma(D)$ is the Yang-Lee edge exponent. We derive exact expressions for the number of DBP of size $N$ in two dimensions.