The death rate for white middle-aged Americans with less than a college education is rising at a "startling rate", the Washington Post and other newspapers reported today.
The mortality rate for white men and women ages 45-54 with less than a college education increased markedly between 1999 and 2013, most likely because of problems with legal and illegal drugs, alcohol and suicide, the researchers concluded. Before then, death rates for that group dropped steadily, and at a faster pace.
The
research by two Princeton University economists, Dr. Anne Case and her husband Dr. Angus Deaton, 2015 Nobel laureate in economics, link the "sharp increase" in mortality to drugs and alcohol, suicide, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis. This turnaround in mortality reverses decades of progress, the researchers write, and the same pattern is not seen in other rich countries, nor is it seen among African Americans or Hispanics in the United States."
“Half a million people are dead who should not be dead,” Deaton said.
Case and Denton were examining government statistics on death rates when they uncovered the trend spike. They were initially suspect of the findings and thought it might be a mistake, but the data showed that "mortality rates for this group had risen an average of a half percent per year since 1999, after falling an average of 2 percent annually for the 20 years before that." During the same period, the death rate for middle-aged blacks and Hispanics continued to decline.
The New York Times also described this trend as "startling".
“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 [that accompanied the research].
“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.
For many Americans, the Bush-Cheney recession is still lingering. "The least educated also had the most financial distress, Dr. Meara and Dr. Skinner noted in their commentary." There is "a more pessimistic outlook among whites about their financial futures".
In the 15 years before ObamaCare helped make affordable 'minimal essential' health insurance for Americans in 2014, middle-aged whites saw an increasing death rate. The New York Times reported the researchers 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.
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.
The increasing middle-aged white death rate "could have far-reaching implications as the surviving members of this sizable segment of the population continue toward retirement and eligibility for Medicare," the
Washington Post noted. This is a public health issue that could resonate in the 2016 election and beyond.
In August 2012, a Pew Research repoted Republicans had made big gains among white working-class voters. "The Republican Party now has a 12-point advantage over Democrats among non-Hispanic white voters: 52% identify with or lean toward the Republican Party while 40% identify with the Democratic Party or lean Democratic," Pew Research found.
Lower-income and less educated whites also have shifted substantially toward the Republican Party since 2008. The GOP has largely erased the wide lead Democrats had among white voters with family incomes less than $30,000. And middle-income whites ($30,000-$74,999), who were split between the parties four years ago, now favor the GOP by 17 points. By contrast, there has been no shift among higher income whites, who favor the GOP by roughly the same margin today as in 2008.
Similarly, whites without a college degree now tilt decidedly toward the Republican Party – the GOP now holds a 54% to 37% advantage among non-college whites, who were split about evenly four years ago. The partisanship of white college graduates, by contrast, has not changed.
Since the research only looked at data through 2013, it does not reflect the increased access to health insurance that Affordable Care Act made possible. Will this death rate increase be reversed as more middle-aged white Americans have better access to health care? Would an economy that actually worked for middle-class American make a difference?