WASHINGTON — It’s a discovery that’s been puzzling experts and goes against the conventional wisdom: In direct contrast with every other racial and ethnic group in the U.S., death rates among middle-aged white people are rising.
The increase in mortality is especially strong among white people ages 45-54 with no more than a high school education, according to the study by Princeton economists Angus Deaton (who won the 215 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science last month) and Anne Case, released Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The causes turn out to be as surprising: While it’s common to be concerned about heart health and diabetes, and many people adjust their diets accordingly, the leading causes appear to be suicides and substance abuse and its related diseases.
Mortality rates fell, on the other hand, among Hispanics and black non-Hispanics in that age group, as well as those 65 and above in all ethnic groups. The U.S. was also the only country to see an increase.
“Between 1970 and 2013, a combination of behavioral change, prevention, and treatment brought down mortality rates for those aged 45-54 by 44 percent,” the study says.
“Parallel improvements were seen in other rich countries. Improvements in health also brought declines in morbidity, even among the increasingly long-lived elderly.”
But that’s not the case for middle-aged white people between 1998 and 2013, when the numbers used for the study were drawn.
“This was absolutely a surprise to us. It knocked us off our chairs,” Case told The Guardian newspaper. “We wanted to make sure we weren’t missing something; everyone’s been stunned.”
The trends have resulted in the deaths of about half a million more Americans since 1998 than if mortality rates had continued to fall as they had been. For comparison, The Guardian says, the death toll from AIDS in the U.S. is about 650,000.
Case and Deaton, who are married, suspect that the use of painkillers has had a lot to do with the increase, but they also theorize that financial stress has something to do with it.
“It may be that they have less hope about their ability to live a good life,” Case told The Guardian.
“Wow,” Samuel Preston, a professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, told The New York Times. “This is a vivid indication that something is awry in these American households.”
The mortality rate among middle-aged black people is still higher than that of whites — 581 to 415 per 100,000 people — but the gap is narrowing. The mortality rate for middle-aged Hispanics is 262 per 100,000, The Times says.
“If the epidemic is brought under control, its survivors may have a healthy old age,” Case and Deaton write.
“However, 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.”
