Good news
Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2015 8:16 am
Things are so much better in this country after NAFTA, thank you Bill Clinton!
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/insid ... .html?_r=0
More White People Die From Suicide and Substance Abuse: Why?
By GINA KOLATANOV. 3, 2015
Angus Deaton with his wife, Anne Case, right, last month after he won the 2015 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science. Together, they wrote a study analyzing mortality rates. Credit Ben Solomon for The New York Times
"" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" style="border: 0px; border-image: none; vertical-align: bottom;" Continue reading the main story
Recent Comments
Barbara
2 hours ago
It's too soon to know what is driving the suicide and substance abuse in this segment of the population. The lack of compassion in the...
Tom
9 hours ago
I am one of those older white male candidates for suicide. I have no romantic attachments because I can't afford to date. Women don't want...
George Hoffman
9 hours ago
Being a baby boomer born in 1946, I grew up during the golden age for the working class when good-paying union jobs with benefits were still...
The big mystery is why? Why would the death rate for middle-aged non-Hispanic whites be increasing after decades of decline while rates for middle-aged blacks and Hispanics continue to fall? And why didn’t other rich countries have the same mortality rate increase for people in midlife?
The two Princeton economics professors — Angus Deaton and his wife, Anne Case — who wrote the report that is the subject of my front-page article today about rising death rates for middle-aged white Americans, have no clear answer, only speculation. But the effect is stark. Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case calculate that if the death rate among middle-aged whites had continued to decline at the rate it fell between 1979 and 1998, half a million deaths would have been avoided over the years from 1999 through 2013. That, they note, is about the same number of deaths as those caused by AIDS through 2015.
The major causes of the excess deaths are suicides, drug abuse and alcoholism. (For once, obesity is not on the list as a major player.) But while deaths from these causes have increased among middle-aged whites, they actually decreased for blacks and Hispanics. In the past, drug abuse deaths were more common in middle-aged blacks than in middle-aged whites. Now they are more common in whites. The same pattern holds for deaths from alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver. The suicide rate for whites was four times that of blacks.
Could people be taking drugs and killing themselves as a response to the economic slowdown? Maybe. But, if so, Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case said, then why aren’t people in other countries responding the same way?
Recent reports of illness and disability might provide some clues. More middle-aged whites report that their general health is not good; and, more report chronic pain — neck pain, face pain, joint pain, sciatica. More report mental distress or mental illness. More say they have trouble walking a quarter mile or climbing stairs. More say they have trouble shopping or socializing with friends. More say they can no longer work.
Yet older people are actually doing better — less addiction, disability rates falling.
The dismal picture for middle-aged whites makes Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case wonder how much of what they are seeing might be attributed to the explosive increase in prescription narcotics.
What’s interesting, Dr. Case said, is that the people who report pain in middle age are the people who report difficulty in socializing, shopping, sitting for three hours, walking for two blocks.
Dr. Deaton envisions poorly educated middle-aged white Americans who feel socially isolated are out of work, suffering from chronic pain and turning to narcotics or alcohol for relief, or taking their own lives. Starting in the 1990s, he said, there was a huge emphasis on controlling pain, with pain charts going up in every doctor’s office and a concomitant increase in prescription narcotics.
“We don’t know which came first, were the drugs pushed so much that people are hypersensitive to pain or does overprescription of the drugs make pain worse?” Dr. Case said.
Dr. Deaton noted that blacks and Hispanics may have been protected to an extent. Some pharmacies in neighborhoods where blacks and Hispanics live do not even stock those drugs, and doctors have been less likely to prescribe them for these groups. Dr. Deaton said.
“A black person has to be in a lot more pain to get a prescription,” Dr. Case said. “That was thought to be horrible, but now it turns out to maybe have a silver lining.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/insid ... .html?_r=0
More White People Die From Suicide and Substance Abuse: Why?
By GINA KOLATANOV. 3, 2015
Angus Deaton with his wife, Anne Case, right, last month after he won the 2015 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science. Together, they wrote a study analyzing mortality rates. Credit Ben Solomon for The New York Times
"" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" style="border: 0px; border-image: none; vertical-align: bottom;" Continue reading the main story
Recent Comments
Barbara
2 hours ago
It's too soon to know what is driving the suicide and substance abuse in this segment of the population. The lack of compassion in the...
Tom
9 hours ago
I am one of those older white male candidates for suicide. I have no romantic attachments because I can't afford to date. Women don't want...
George Hoffman
9 hours ago
Being a baby boomer born in 1946, I grew up during the golden age for the working class when good-paying union jobs with benefits were still...
The big mystery is why? Why would the death rate for middle-aged non-Hispanic whites be increasing after decades of decline while rates for middle-aged blacks and Hispanics continue to fall? And why didn’t other rich countries have the same mortality rate increase for people in midlife?
The two Princeton economics professors — Angus Deaton and his wife, Anne Case — who wrote the report that is the subject of my front-page article today about rising death rates for middle-aged white Americans, have no clear answer, only speculation. But the effect is stark. Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case calculate that if the death rate among middle-aged whites had continued to decline at the rate it fell between 1979 and 1998, half a million deaths would have been avoided over the years from 1999 through 2013. That, they note, is about the same number of deaths as those caused by AIDS through 2015.
The major causes of the excess deaths are suicides, drug abuse and alcoholism. (For once, obesity is not on the list as a major player.) But while deaths from these causes have increased among middle-aged whites, they actually decreased for blacks and Hispanics. In the past, drug abuse deaths were more common in middle-aged blacks than in middle-aged whites. Now they are more common in whites. The same pattern holds for deaths from alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver. The suicide rate for whites was four times that of blacks.
Could people be taking drugs and killing themselves as a response to the economic slowdown? Maybe. But, if so, Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case said, then why aren’t people in other countries responding the same way?
Recent reports of illness and disability might provide some clues. More middle-aged whites report that their general health is not good; and, more report chronic pain — neck pain, face pain, joint pain, sciatica. More report mental distress or mental illness. More say they have trouble walking a quarter mile or climbing stairs. More say they have trouble shopping or socializing with friends. More say they can no longer work.
Yet older people are actually doing better — less addiction, disability rates falling.
The dismal picture for middle-aged whites makes Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case wonder how much of what they are seeing might be attributed to the explosive increase in prescription narcotics.
What’s interesting, Dr. Case said, is that the people who report pain in middle age are the people who report difficulty in socializing, shopping, sitting for three hours, walking for two blocks.
Dr. Deaton envisions poorly educated middle-aged white Americans who feel socially isolated are out of work, suffering from chronic pain and turning to narcotics or alcohol for relief, or taking their own lives. Starting in the 1990s, he said, there was a huge emphasis on controlling pain, with pain charts going up in every doctor’s office and a concomitant increase in prescription narcotics.
“We don’t know which came first, were the drugs pushed so much that people are hypersensitive to pain or does overprescription of the drugs make pain worse?” Dr. Case said.
Dr. Deaton noted that blacks and Hispanics may have been protected to an extent. Some pharmacies in neighborhoods where blacks and Hispanics live do not even stock those drugs, and doctors have been less likely to prescribe them for these groups. Dr. Deaton said.
“A black person has to be in a lot more pain to get a prescription,” Dr. Case said. “That was thought to be horrible, but now it turns out to maybe have a silver lining.”
