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Gina Kolata reports at The New York Times that 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, primarily because of the declining health and fortunes of poorly educated American whites who are dying at such a high rate that they are increasing the death rate for the entire group of middle-aged white Americans. "It is difficult to find modern settings with survival losses of this magnitude," say Ellen Meara and Jonathan S. Skinner.
Though not fully understood, the increased deaths are largely thought to be a result of more suicides and the misuse of drugs and alcohol, driven by easier access to powerful prescription painkillers, cheaper high quality heroin and greater financial stresses. Death rates for people with a high school education or less rose by 22 percent while they actually fell for those with a college education. The rise in death rates among middle-aged white Americans means half a million more people have died in the US since 1998 than if the previous trend had continued. The death toll is comparable to the 650,000 Americans who lost their lives during the Aids epidemic from 1981 to the middle of this year, the researchers say. Anne Case and Angus Deaton warn that middle-aged Americans who are turning to drink and drugs are set to suffer more health problems than their elders unless the downwards trend can be halted. "This is not automatic. If the epidemic is brought under control, its survivors may have a healthy old age. However, addictions are hard to treat and pain is hard to control, so those currently in midlife may be a 'lost generation' whose future is less bright than those who preceded them."
(Score: 5, Informative) by TrumpetPower! on Wednesday November 04 2015, @07:58PM
Huge numbers of people are out of work. Not just officially unemployed, but not even counted because they've given up hope of finding a job and thus aren't even looking.
People with no prospects for work look for means of escape, including self-medication, and are less likely to care much about what little they might have. And caring less will lead to less attention for things like driving, which in turn can lead to more fatal errors.
It's a shame the "wealth creators" have conned everybody into being so opposed to investing in our community. The last time we faced this sort of economic crisis, we created the Works Projects Administration...and the people the WPA hired built all the infrastructure that's served us for so well for so long but is now finally starting to decay. A new WPA for the new century would be about the best thing the country could do. We'd re-invest in our own infrastructure, and give countless people opportunities to do something productive with their lives.
But, since that does fuck-all for the quarterly P&L statements for the parasite class....
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @08:31PM
No, this is more idiotic medical research:
I happened to already have this population data... You can see it is just the distribution of ages within that range (45-54) skewing from younger to older (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomers): [wikipedia.org]
http://s10.postimg.org/m774e1bmg/pops.jpg [postimg.org]
Data source:
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @09:01PM
Actually, looking at the percentages makes it more obvious: http://s7.postimg.org/wp94li18p/pops2.png [postimg.org]
This is for the whole population (not just whites), but I bet the age shift is even stronger for that subgroup. Also, the last author on this paper has a nobel prize:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Deaton [wikipedia.org]
Ridiculous.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 05 2015, @01:21AM
The prize for economics is the one that tries to ride the coat-tails of the real Nobel Prizes, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 05 2015, @02:08AM
Original AC here. Yea, it's true that prize is a fake nobel.
Still, it is a very bad sign that people this incompetent are being rewarded in our society with professorships, prestigious prizes, and national media attention for their research . How is an apparently top level economist unaware of the baby boom and how this creates artifacts in data with binned ages? Not only that but the other author on the paper, the three reviewers and editor at PNAS, and the half dozen researchers quoted in the media about this topic. It's idiocracy out there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 05 2015, @01:17AM
That's why I've suggested that Japan's "make work" programs may be better than having cheaper trinkets. A dude without a job is a pariah in our society (whether fair or not). That he can buy $8 plastic lawn-chairs matters to him much less than having a job. Plus, idle people are more likely to get into mayhem.
(True, Japan has a high suicide rate, but it may be more of a cultural thing than due to the economy. It's more or less a "solution" accepted throughout their history.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 05 2015, @02:48AM
It could also be related to their insane working conditions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 05 2015, @02:03AM
Sooner or later technology is going to put us all out of work... except for a few jobs like CEO and US Senator.
That's if the bugs don't take over on account of global warming.
We're doomed...