It’s not clear why only middle-aged whites had such a rise. And so we started looking for the other things. This is the same as that in France, Australia, Sweden, Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom, along with other European nations. The same pattern was not seen among Hispanic or Black Americans and in other countries so far.
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Thanks to medical advances and preventative measures, overall death rates in the United States have fallen in the last century.
They estimated that if the white mortality rate of 1998 had continued, 96,000 lives would have been saved between 1998 and 2013.
Saying the turnaround in the trend was “extraordinary”, Deaton and Case concluded that an additional 488,500 Americans passed away during the time frame that would have not died if the death rate had not reversed itself. Prior to this trend, the death rate for the group was declining at about an average of two percent per year. And more disconcerting is the fact that the causes of death are more psychological and emotional.
Drug and alcohol use that results in death from either poisoning or chronic disease, as well as increased self-extermination, point to social pathologies fostered by government policies that favor moving jobs offshore, reducing wages, restricting access to health care and enabling age discrimination in hiring. If mortality rates group had stayed on their steady downward course, a half-million more people would be alive today, they determined. Adults with the least education (a high school degree or less) experienced the sharpest increase in death rates – up 22%, the study found.
Older Americans, the study noted, are leading increasingly longer lives as are blacks and Hispanics who are considered middle-aged.
Researchers found that this death rate rise can’t be completely understood.
In spite of all the data, it is still intriguing why this particular age group of the population has shown such alarming rise in death rate. While lung cancer rates went down and diabetes remained stable, chronic liver disease, suicides and especially alcohol and drug poisoning spiked.
Case and Deaton cite the increased availability of opioid prescriptions for pain, which began in the late 1990s, as potential reasons for increased mortality from poisoning and suicide. They also say economics could have been a driver in the change.
‘Although the epidemic of pain, suicide and drug overdoses preceeded the financial crisis, ties to economic insecurity are possible, ‘ the authors note. It’s most evident in those whose education did not extend beyond high school but is also seen in those with college degrees.
The high death rates also coincide with self-reported declines in health, mental health and the ability to cope with daily living among middle-aged whites over this same period, the researchers report. One in three white Americans reports chronic joint pain, and 1 in 7 reports sciatica.
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The authors added: ‘A serious concern is that those now in midlife will age into Medicare in worse health than the now elderly. “Those now in midlife may be a ‘lost generation, ‘ whose future is less bright than those who preceded them”, they write.
