Middle-Aged White Americans Take a Significant Turn for the Worse

"Something startling is happening to middle-aged white Americans," writes Gina Kolata, science and medicine writer for The New York Times. "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."

That finding was reported [October 12] by two Princeton economists, Angus Deaton, who last month won the 2015 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, and Anne Case. 

Deaton and Case, a husband and wife team, point to three specific causes resulting in an "epidemic of suicides and afflictions" affecting "45 to 54 years old whites with no more than a high school education," writes Kolata.

• Alcoholic liver disease
• Overdoses of heroin and
• Prescription opioids

"In that group, death rates rose by 22 percent while they actually fell for those with a college education," adds Kolata. 

(T)hey are dying at such a high rate that they are increasing the death rate for the entire group of middle-aged white Americans, Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case found.

To understand the scope of deaths, it is "comparable to lives lost in the US AIDS epidemic through mid-2015," according to an analysis of the Deaton-Case study to be published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

In contrast, the death rate for middle-aged blacks and Hispanics continued to decline during the same period, as did death rates for younger and older people of all races and ethnic groups.

No one reason was given for the increase in mortality from the three causes, though Kolata does offer insight into the problems affecting this age group. "Those with the least education reported the most pain and the worst general health [... and] the most financial distress."

However, no correlation was made with racial groups—the topic of a subsequent piece by Kolata.