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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/health...finds.html?_r=0



Death Rates Rising for Middle-Aged White Americans, Study Finds


By GINA KOLATANOV. 2, 2015

Something startling is happening to middle-aged white Americans. Unlike every other age group, unlike every other racial and ethnic group, unlike their counterparts in other rich countries, death rates in this group have been rising, not falling.

That finding was reported Monday by two Princeton economists, Angus Deaton, who last month won the 2015 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, and Anne Case. Analyzing health and mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and from other sources, they concluded that rising annual death rates among this group are being driven not by the big killers like heart disease and diabetes but by an epidemic of suicides and afflictions stemming from substance abuse: alcoholic liver disease and overdoses of heroin and prescription opioids.

The analysis by Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case may offer the most rigorous evidence to date of both the causes and implications of a development that has been puzzling demographers in recent years: the declining health and fortunes of poorly educated American whites. In middle age, they are dying at such a high rate that they are increasing the death rate for the entire group of middle-aged white Americans, Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case found.

The mortality rate for whites 45 to 54 years old with no more than a high school education increased by 134 deaths per 100,000 people from 1999 to 2014.

“It is difficult to find modern settings with survival losses of this magnitude,” wrote two Dartmouth economists, Ellen Meara and Jonathan S. Skinner, in a commentary to the Deaton-Case analysis to be published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Wow,” said Samuel Preston, a professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on mortality trends and the health of populations, who was not involved in the research. “This is a vivid indication that something is awry in these American households.”

Dr. Deaton had but one parallel. “Only H.I.V./AIDS in contemporary times has done anything like this,” he said.

In contrast, the death rate for middle-aged blacks and Hispanics continued to decline during the same period, as did death rates for younger and older people of all races and ethnic groups.

Middle-aged blacks still have a higher mortality rate than whites — 581 per 100,000, compared with 415 for whites — but the gap is closing, and the rate for middle-aged Hispanics is far lower than for middle-aged whites at 262 per 100,000.


David M. Cutler, a Harvard health care economist, said that although it was known that people were dying from causes like opioid addiction, the thought was that those deaths were just blips in the health care statistics and that over all everyone’s health was improving. The new paper, he said, “shows those blips are more like incoming missiles.”
Dying in Middle Age

Death rates are rising for middle-aged white Americans, while declining in other wealthy countries and among other races and ethnicities. The rise appears to be driven by suicide, drugs and alcohol abuse.



Sources: Anne Case and Angus Deaton; PNAS



By The New York Times
Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case (who are husband and wife) say they stumbled on their finding by accident, looking at a variety of national data sets on mortality rates and federal surveys that asked people about their levels of pain, disability and general ill health.


Dr. Deaton was looking at statistics on suicide and happiness, skeptical about whether states with a high happiness level have a low suicide rate. (They do not, he discovered; in fact, the opposite is true.) Dr. Case was interested in poor health, including chronic pain because she has suffered for 12 years from disabling and untreatable lower back pain.

Dr. Deaton noticed in national data sets that middle-aged whites were committing suicide at an unprecedented rate and that the all-cause mortality in this group was rising. But suicides alone, he and Dr. Case realized, were not enough to push up overall death rates, so they began looking at other causes of death. That led them to the discovery that deaths from drug and alcohol poisoning also increased in this group.


Paul '52
NYC
“The people who are, slowly or quickly, killing themselves are the people who thought, in the 60s and 70s, that if they did what their parents did they too would get job security, pensions, and a decent lifestyle.”


They concluded that taken together, suicides, drugs and alcohol explained the overall increase in deaths. The effect was largely confined to people with a high school education or less. In that group, death rates rose by 22 percent while they actually fell for those with a college education.

It is not clear why only middle-aged whites had such a rise in their mortality rates. Dr. Meara and Dr. Skinner, in their commentary, considered a variety of explanations — including a pronounced racial difference in the prescription of opioid drugs and their misuse, and a more pessimistic outlook among whites about their financial futures — but say they cannot fully account for the effect.



Dr. Case, investigating indicators of poor health, discovered that middle-aged people, unlike the young and unlike the elderly, were reporting more pain in recent years than in the past. A third in this group reported they had chronic joint pain over the years 2011 to 2013, and one in seven said they had sciatica. Those with the least education reported the most pain and the worst general health.

The least educated also had the most financial distress, Dr. Meara and Dr. Skinner noted in their commentary. In the period examined by Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case, the inflation-adjusted income for households headed by a high school graduate fell by 19 percent.

Dr. Case found that the number of whites with mental illnesses and the number reporting they had difficulty socializing increased in tandem. Along with that, increasing numbers of middle-aged whites said they were unable to work. She also saw matching increases in the numbers reporting pain and the numbers reporting difficulty socializing, difficulty shopping, difficulty walking for two blocks.

With the pain and mental distress data, Dr. Deaton said, “we had the two halves of the story.” Increases in mortality rates in middle-aged whites rose in parallel with their increasing reports of pain, poor health and distress, he explained. They provided a rationale for the increase in deaths from substance abuse and suicides.

Dr. Preston of the University of Pennsylvania noted that the National Academy of Sciences had published two monographs reporting that the United States had fallen behind other rich countries in improvements in life expectancy. One was on mortality below age 50 and the other on mortality above age 50. He coedited one of those reports. But, he said, because of the age divisions, the researchers analyzing the data missed what Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case found hiding in plain sight.


“We didn’t pick it up,” Dr. Preston said, referring to the increasing mortality rates among middle-aged whites.

Ronald D. Lee, professor of economics, professor of demography and director of the Center on Economics and Demography of Aging at the University of California, Berkeley, was among those taken aback by what Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case discovered.

“Seldom have I felt as affected by a paper,” he said. “It seems so sad.”

Hmmmm. Very interesting.

Drugs, booze and financial instability leads to higher death rates?

Thanks, captain obvious. That's not directed toward you, but the article.

I can see the middle class guy living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to stay middle class as technology upgrades at work make it possible for one man to do the work of 20 while manufacturing jobs have gone to Nations with lower wages. His job is always on the line with no secure future.
His security is attacked from many angles and his house is worth the same as it was 12 years ago. He is also expected to carry half of our Nation now that we have become an adult daycare center.

He sees his neighbor wave to him as he heads off to work while that neighbor has a free ride, does squat, and has pretty much the same things in life that he has.

He wonders why it just doesn't seem worth it anymore.

That's weak.

Plenty of people go through tough events. Never once did I attempt to off myself.

You're always talking about people taking responsibility for their actions. Stay consistent.

Hmmmm. Must have missed the part where the article was about you.

People don't often just off themselves over a bad day, they take that downward spiral of hopelessness, booze, drugs and depression. If eventually the booze and drugs don't take them, they resort to taking direct action.

It's not weak, it happens every day in America.

I can see why white men are more likely to off themselves in America vs other places in the world and its mostly a cultural thing. In this country black men have very little expected of them. I am not saying this is fair or even my opinion but it is a truth observation. If a black man is on welfare for example and has ANY kind of job it's a step above the thug image hip hop portrays so he is doing GOOD. Again I don't feel that way but I have observed it in others many, many times.

Now for white men if you are poor and on welfare then you are viewed as broken or lying about something. The welfare office will come after you hard to kick you off of it. They will say things like, "Your a white man, why can't you find a job it shouldn't be hard for you." They will do things to mess with you and constantly try to interrupt your eligibility. If you see a white man working at McDonalds your first thought is wth is he working here for? What a loser!

A black man with any kind of job is more likely to meet society's expectations than a white man especially a woman's. A white woman in a relationship with a white man stuck in a dead end job is highly likely to end up in divorce. She expects her white man to have a GOOD job and be THE provider. Same white woman dating a black man has a high chance of being satisfied if he has a job of any kind. It's a racist thing to observe but I have witnessed it many times.

With all of that show me a white man who lost his job, then had his wife leave him because of it, and see no future for gaining back the life he once had and I can easily see why the suicide rate for white men is greatly higher than other ethnicities. It's because a struggling white man is viewed better off dead than being a failure or a bum. When you factor in the growing number of people who don't have faith in a God who thinks suicide is wrong then you have even less reason for them to keep fighting it out in a world disgusted by them.

I am not racist but this is a very racist country and each race has its own unique problems with race discrimination.

Oh! Time to make the popcorn...

what popcorn? what razor said was right.

this is a white country. lets make that very clear. you guys control pretty much everything here.

whether you admit it or not, the first thing a lot of white people see toward blacks is thugs and gang bangers. so, and i've experienced it first hand, when a black dude actually has some sort of middle class job, the first thing that people say is "oh, you're not like all the other black people".

what Razor said, i can't really debate, even though it's screwed up.

But i will say this: middle age white guys. y'all have nobody but yourselves to blame. y'all live to work, instead of working to live. nobody told you to shoot up with heroin, or neglect y'all wives.

thats the biggest thing with divorces. a lot of neglected wives. another thing is you guys get with some super gold digging women. once it gets tough, they wanna bounce because they can't shop at the mall anymore.

my wife(white, german) didn't marry me because i had money. she's always made way more than i have, even with me getting SSG money in the military.

She married me because i lay that pipe right in the bed room, and i choose spending time with her over work. i choose her and my kids over anything. she loves me for who i am, not what materialistic nonsense i can provide her.

basically, my wife is a ride or die. a lot of people don't know what that is.

I am aware that many will probably be offended. I don't care. I personally had to go through it when I was out of work for a few years after having a heat stroke.

Crunch crunch crunch, slurp, crunch crunch crunch....

Sorry about the heat stroke.

crunch slurp crunch

Thats the trouble with you Black guys, you get hooked up with some German woman and ......

crunch crunch crunch

is that the sound of your slipped disk cracking when you walk?

No, but I have to agree with you on White guys marrying Gold Diggers.

I married the most beautiful Woman in the World and I have put her to work digging in my Gold Mine from time to time.

Lima, what do you think is going on with this article?

Any ideas?

I think you're pretty spot on. Or at least close enough. Being bombarded with ads towards white males (the largest demographic in the US) about how you're all supposed to be happy and living large. When those ads end I bet one could feel pretty bad.

I have a feeling this will cause us to look at drug policy.

yea man, i mean if you're gonna get with a gold digger, at least go buy one from Asia or Ukraine like all these other middle aged white guys do. don't get suckered into it.

since we're talking about middle aged white guys, i'll just go off of what i personally observe.

you guys get with women for too often based off image over the actual quality of the woman. y'all concern yourselves way too much off what other people are gonna think about her, her family background and all this other stuff. instead of letting it come naturally, y'all force it.

i understand it's a pride thing. guys naturally want to be the provider. but there's a fine line between providing and being a glorified sugar daddy.

then y'all wanna commit suicide when the good life takes a hit and the chick bounce. when everybody around you saw it coming a mile away.

work ethic is fine. overworking yourself is not. thats why a lot of y'all pop so many pills and start snorting cocaine or shooting up heroin. it's like you guys have zero understanding of what a balanced life means.

missing all your kids events, then wonder why they turn emo and hate you when they're teenagers. your wife starts banging the personal trainer, because you decided that working til 9 every night was more important than showing your woman what most women simply want in their husbands: attention, loyalty, and sex.

most women i've come across don't give a damn about what we do for a living. as long as we have a job and don't live at home with mom, they could care less about all that other materialistic crap.

but man, whats up with y'all attracting the women that just passed the course of gold digging 101?

my homeboy is going through that now. we was talking last night, he was telling me that his wife demanded an BMW X3 because all the other women in her circle are driving high end vehicles.

the F outta here. chick better be happy if i buy her ass a honda civic. if you sitting at home doing jack crap, don't be asking for all this. but man y'all fall into that trap too often.

but i dunno, maybe some of y'all like living like that.

in urban culture, we call that "tricking"

Sorry, very busy at work. I post at lunch and then don't get back to websites until normally the kids go to bed. My feeling is that this is in conjunction with the 60 minutes piece on Sunday night about the pills and drug addiction. They made a horrible decision years back to start treating pain the way that they do.
I don't think that this article is totally about people offing themselves over divorces, money although there is some of that. And as the middle class keeps shrinking I think that this issue is going to keep getting worse.

I think that the heroin and pill epidemic is the lower & middle class Aids crisis. I don't have a huge friend circle but almost every family I know has somebody dealing with addiction and many are pills/heroin.
Also, throw in how this country is addressing mental illness-it just sucks.

I live about 20 mile south of Youngstown and it is amazing the non-responsive overdose calls I hear on the scanner. Callers to 911 saying that somebody took 25, 40, 60 pills. Those I would classify as suicide attempts.
But, I am only home for a few hours a night until I go to bed (I might listen for a hour while I read) and some nights there are 3-5 overdoses in our 5 county area that they say are heroin.

I hear ya. I also hear that Heroin has gotten so cheap these days it is the hard drug of choice for many.

The pressure is really on for the middle class that they have not experienced in their lifetimes. It comes from all angles and once you decide to self medicate, you can soon loose who you really are as a person. Now you are messed up and facing the same pressures, the undrugged you might have a fighting chance but the Druggie doesn't think like he needs too.

Very sad.

I have no clue what you are talking about when it comes to White guys and their women. I have a lot of White friends and none of them carry that kind of attitude. Maybe a generational thing.

I am sure my wife picked me as her prize though.

From the description you provided, I'm a very lucky middle aged white guy.

My wife gives far more than she asks for which makes giving an easy thing.

I agree with Swish, the white men in Atlanta are shallow as hell. They mostly want eye candy on their arm, and don't care about anything beyond that.

Thats because they see Women as nothing more than new cars.
No love involved there.

I blame progressive liberalism.

and thats a great thing, bro.

like i said, since we're talking about you guys, i was just giving my observation. there's plenty of stuff to slam my race with, but thats in another thread. maybe somebody could make that thread. i'm not doing it.

anyway, that of course varies from location to location.

like Eve in ATL. didn't even know it was that bad over there. i thought ATL was kinda tamed compared to other locations.

i would guess that it's even, maybe slightly higher chance of finding a good woman, and vise versa of course with finding a good dude with it.

but when it comes to whites, in general(my observation, im stressing that, it could be different for yall) you guys care SOOOOOO much about what race the chick is, what background, and get intimidated super hard if a woman makes the same or more than you guys. it's crazy.

so much superficial stuff, that y'all end up going crazy because they're trying to live this fantasy lifestyle that just simply isn't sustainable. which then leads to drug abuse, and a host of other problems.

Maybe it's a version of the "american dream" that y'all have. society and the media is always pimping white guys with being fit, having a beard, driving fast cars, hot women, partying, being some successful businessman.

Wallstreet is dominated by middle aged whites.

it's no surprise that places like that have the highest drug abuse and other factors. Was talking to a guy a the bank who said "Wolf of Wall Street" might as well be a documentary.

Omg, I had that problem with men I dated not dealing well with me making more than them. It's like they get mental about it. I couldn't care less about it, and they make it a focus. Just ugh.

This needs to be requoted. I understand everyone taking pride in working hard, but that doesn't mean you're entitled to anything. I think this is where frustration comes from. Working hard doesn't guarantee that you get everything you want. There are things you simply just won't have in life no matter how hard you work. There may be a lot of things that seem attainable, but they're not worth stressing yourself out over. Working hard just gives you a chance to give you a lot of things that you NEED. There will always be a sacrifice.


However, women need to realize this as well. If women and men don't understand the concept of balance, they shouldn't be together.

I would love it if my wife made more than I do. 6 or 7 times more would be really awesome.

This is a reality that directly cuts into the American Dream and how we interact with said dream. I think this and our convenient culture is pretty much going to be the death of the major demographic.

M.O.B. that's how I roll.

Not to be racist, seriously not trying to be but you're black right? Kind of fits just what I said does it not?



I quote myself, "A black man with any kind of job is more likely to meet society's expectations than a white man especially a woman's. A white woman in a relationship with a white man stuck in a dead end job is highly likely to end up in divorce. She expects her white man to have a GOOD job and be THE provider. Same white woman dating a black man has a high chance of being satisfied if he has a job of any kind. It's a racist thing to observe but I have witnessed it many times.""



I don't think that the women are gold diggers. They are offering up their bodies and providing children for their man and just want to be taken care of for doing so. They know that for white men it is EXPECTED. It's not like white men are against the idea. It's been ingrained into us for thousands upon thousands of years.

The problem is that the women's movement granted women the right to work and instead of that extra income helping families it hurt them. You probably think I am crazy for saying that right?

Here is the thing though. For a long while its mostly been that a company sets market prices on what a husband can afford to buy for his family. That meant prices had to stay cheaper. Once the wife become a breadwinner too the prices become affordable when combined income could afford not just the husbands. The feel of the pain of inflation got delayed. Then the recession hit and your lucky in even one member of the house is working. All of a sudden you can't afford ANYTHING. You're getting buried in debt because things are priced to be affordable for a husband and wife who are both working. Not just one of them.

In that situation the woman leaves her husband, gets the house, gets alimony, child support, and the man is just fugged. Now he goes to jail because he can't pay and can't find a job. Now he watches while everything he worked for is gone and some other dude is sexxing up his wife and living his life.

To me it's a miracle there are not more mass murders in this country. I know of over a dozen men right now that fight going on a killing spree at any given moment. I would probably be one of them too if that happened to me.

This materialistic lifestyle of the 21st century is destroying families left and right. The biggest and best of everything is the fastest way to destroy your lives. Settle for what you need and enjoy more time with your family =)

? thats expected from all men, not just whites, dude.

i guess you expect a white person to have good credit and some prestigious jobs, since we're talking about perceived assumptions.

i never met a women who didn't expect a man to have a job. so you lost me. now i'm confused, cause it really seems like you're saying us black men are lazy.

I grew up in the projects in Ohio and in Mississippi. There are so many young black men that have not been challenged to have expectations of themselves much less from other people. I have spent a LOT of time with black people growing up if for no other reason that to make sure I would not get shot walking home. I saw it every single day and I am NOT saying it's right or good.

I'm saying its normal to go up to a black or white woman and ask them what they expect from a black man. It is almost always that if he has any kind of job its all good. Just stay in shape and look handsome enough.

You ask those same women about a white man and they ALWAYS say he better have a GOOD job, he better be working on a house, and have plans for the future. They don't really care what he looks like. It's just a nice bonus if they do.

It's disgusting, I hate it, but if you don't believe me go make a poll question for 20 random women and simply ask, "What do you expect from a black man?" Then go poll 20 other women the same thing except change black to white.

Hell make a youtube video of it for fun. To make it better have a woman ask the questions so the women let down their guard a bit. Then do another survey of the same questions in a rich area and another one is a poor area. See if between the three polls anything changes.

Prove me wrong =)

that read less of what women expect from black men, and more of what you think of black men.

you're making this outlandish claim. the burden of proof is on you.

and who deems what is a good job or not?

there are plenty of middle aged white guys working average jobs with good wives. you're really not making any sense.

i was in agreement that the standard is a bit higher...but you went off the deep end now.

My opinion on most black men is pretty different. I can sit down next to 100 black men and feel the same as if they are white, indian, chinese, etc. I have been all over the world mate and many of my views are very broad because of it.

I have known many fine black men from poor areas and rich areas alike. I would say that in general I don't like poor people from the inner city of ANY race. Poor people from the country are not the same culturally as poor from the inner city. There are always exceptions mind you but I am saying this in a general way.

I am not racist but I am definitely an elitist snob =)

understood.

I am saying that from black women I have talked a great deal with that if her black man even works at mcdonalds she is happy. That is what several, and I mean several black women have told me. I was talking to a nice young black woman earlier this week even and it was the same thing. I was like shocked a bit that it was still like that so I asked her. Don't you think you should demand more from a man than that. She was like, "Honey if a black man even gets his lazy ass up to go work at a job I'd be happier than chit. Least then I know he aint runnin round on me." Her words not mine.

Like I said women's opinions not mine. You know I am very hardcore about a man being the head of the house and taking care of his family. I don't care what color his skin is. I always expect a man to be a man. This article was not about what I think though it was about why middle aged white men are committing suicide at an alarming rate. I am just stating that the extremely high expectation of our society are a real burden to middle aged men in a depressed economy.

Howdy neighbor lol. Was just in North Lima twice yesterday, and will be driving through there again today on my way to Boardman. I was wondering how many overdose calls your hearing from Wellsville. They are having a major problem

that heroin and meth stuff.....whats up with that?

and why is it so prevalent in...your community? (whites)

which, on a side note, i never believed that nonsense about weed being a gateway drug.

the effects of weed aren't anything remotely similar to meth or heroin. not physically or mentally. i haven't, and never knew anybody who was like "man, smoking weed isn't doing it for me, lets go do some meth!!"

those drugs make you turn up, weed makes you turn waaaaaaay down.

why can't we all just stick to weed?

man when i was working at Rick Case Honda, the white guys were popping adderall, oxy, and other stuff upstairs. we went out one night......i dunno how these guys didn't die. Ozzy osbourne would've been like "guys this way too much".

just my opinion, but man it seems like you guys are constantly trying to escape from whatever life you're currently living.