The Guardian is reporting a study conducted at Princeton University into the death rates in the US and six other countries. From 1978 to 1998 all showed reduction in the rates among white non-Hispanic Americans of around 2% a year, probably caused by improvements in medicine and other factors. After 1998 the trend continued in the other six but the US started to buck the trend.
While other countries saw their mortality rates continue to fall, they began to rise among middle-aged white non-Hispanic Americans by 0.5% a year. The effect was not confined to the 45- to 54-year-olds. In the 35- to 44-year-old bracket, the mortality rate stopped falling in 2000. For 55- to 59-year-olds, the fall slowed to 0.5% a year.
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 change is not even and disproportionately affects the less well educated. While the rate for those with a bachelor's degree or higher continued to show a fall; those with a high school diploma or lower bore the brunt rising by more than 20%. Among them, deaths from drug overdoses and alcohol poisoning grew four times; suicides were up by 81% and deaths from alcoholism and cirrhosis by 50%.
The team proposed some possible reasons for their observations.
The researchers cite the surge in the use of powerful opioid painkillers as one contributing factor, with drink and suicide potentially related to people needing relief from pain or mental health problems. But they suspect that financial stress is involved too, with the fall in household incomes among white non-Hispanics being particularly tough on those with no more than a high school education. “It may be that they have less hope about their ability to live a good life,” Case said.
There is of course an elephant in the room as to why the death rates in the UK, Australia, France, Germany, Sweden and Canada continue to fall but in the US rose. All the others have a form of universal health care which includes mental health cover. Another factor is that they all have long term unemployment benefit schemes which, in the UK and Australia at least, emphasize job (re)training for those out of work longest. None of the others of course have societies that idolize "the .... dream" in quite the way Amerian society does. There is a recognition that hard work and effort does not necessarily lead to riches.