Substance abuse, suicide contributing factors, says study.
By Raif Karerat
A significant portion of white, middle-aged Americans has experienced a startling rise in its death rate since 1999, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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.
“Drugs and alcohol, and suicide … are clearly the proximate cause,” said Angus Deaton, the 2015 Nobel laureate in economics, who co-authored the paper with his wife, Anne Case. Both are economics professors at Princeton University.
Angus Deaton
The authors warned of a sicker population, less able to prepare for the costs associated with old age who will place an increasing burden on society and federal programs.
“This is the first indicator that the plane has crashed,” said Jonathan Skinner, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College, who reviewed the study and co-authored a commentary that appears with it. “I don’t know what’s going on, but the plane has definitely crashed.”
Death rates for other developed nations examined by the two researchers, as well as rates for U.S. blacks and Hispanics, continued their steady decline of recent decades. Whites aged between between 30 and 64, along more educated whites also had lower death rates.
“Half a million people are dead who should not be dead,” Deaton told the Washington Post. “About 40 times the Ebola stats. You’re getting up there with HIV-AIDS.”
3 Comments
What is startling is what has been overlooked: economicssendil.blogspot.com/2015/11/deaton-and-case-are-wrong-mortality.html
It’s pharma drugs often in combination with alcohol that destroys livers
and kidneys. Advil and acetaminophen for instance, my brother, in
that age groups had his kidneys and live damaged by it, and the
doctor gave him bad advice and a prescription that caused it.
This is being spun as middle aged white guys are depressed
and killing themselves. ,but it’s really bad medicine.
Read the paper from Deaton.http://pnhp.org/blog/2015/11/0…
Poisonings seem to the be biggest factor. They group them all together so far, into alcohol, prescription and illegal drugs.
Search prescription drug overdose deaths us history
I did an image search to get the graphs. It’s right there.
I think we have found the problem.
Sounds like a bunch of stoned whackos on campus making this stuff up.