According to a recent study, something unexpected and unforeseen is occurring amongst middle aged white Americans. These groups of people are dying at increasing rates due to drug and alcohol use and suicide.
The study and finding was outlined by two Princeton economists, Angus Deaton who won the 2015 Nobel Memorial Prize for Economic Science and Anne Case. They studied and surveyed data relevant to health and mortality from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and from various other sources.
Apparently the increase started since the 1990s and is related to increased availability around that time of certain prescription painkillers. From time to time, the death figures have risen. Since 1998, the morality rate among the white population aged 45-54 has increased.
“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,” said the study by the Princeton economists.
U.S. death rates have been on a general decline for more than a century, with regard to public health measures and advances in medical treatment. In recent decades, the improvement has been driven by decline in death rates from heart diseases and cancer which are the nation’s two leading killers. Among Hispanics and African-Americans, mortality rates continued to decline by around two percent per year.
“Increased availability of opioids prescription drugs, chronic pain (for which opioids are often prescribed), and the economic crisis which began in 2008 may all have contributed to an increase in overdoses, suicide, and increased liver disease associated with alcohol abuse,” said the study.
The causes of deaths for white Americans were primarily suicide, drug and alcohol poisoning and chronic liver disease and cirrhosis. It is also important to note that obesity had also increased in these age groups but has not contributed to this death toll.
“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 that was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case (husband and wife) came across the issue unexpectedly while studying an array of national data regarding morality rates and other federal surveys where people were interviewed and asked regarding the degree of pain, disability and general ill health. They took on themselves to further study about suicide rates.
Dr Deaton noticed a visible trend regarding middle aged people committing suicide at an unparalleled rate. After doing some more research in depth they came to the conclusion that taken together, suicides, drugs and alcohol explained the overall increase in deaths. The effect was largely limited to people with a high school education or less. Therefore, it is evident that education is also a major factor involved in this case. The study also found that among whites with a college degree, the death rates were actually quite low. But for whites who achieved no more than a high school diploma, they were a whopping 736 per 100,000.
“For those with a high school degree or less, deaths caused by drug and alcohol poisoning rose fourfold; suicides rose by 81 percent; and deaths caused by liver disease and cirrhosis rose by 50 percent.”
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