A heady mix of booze, drug addiction and financial anxiety is dragging white, middle-aged people in the US to an early grave.
An analysis of disease and death rates has found that death rates for white, non-Hispanic US citizens aged 45 to 54 rose by about 0.5 per cent per year between 1999 and 2013. People of the same ages in all other rich countries, as well as black and Hispanic US citizens, saw a 2 per cent fall in death rates per year over the same period.
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鈥淚 don鈥檛 think there鈥檚 any single explanation,鈥� says Angus Deaton of Princeton University, who co-authored the analysis with his colleague Anne Case. He says it seems to be a culmination of many slow-acting factors, such as pension worries, alcoholism, lower wages and the availability of addictive painkillers.
Deaton, who was awarded the last month, says that in the 1990s there was an increase in the availability of addictive painkillers and wider access to black-market heroin that coincided with the uptick in mid-life deaths among white people.
鈥淥ne thing people have talked about a lot is the much wider availability of opioids, especially one called ,鈥� says Deaton. 鈥淚t鈥檚 very effective at relieving pain, but has an important addictive component.鈥�
He adds that 鈥渁t the same time, there鈥檚 been a large influx of pure heroin from Mexico, and that has been focused in rural areas of the US and mainly among whites鈥�. Generally speaking, says Deaton, both painkillers and heroin have been more available to whites than blacks and Hispanics, which may partly explain why the other groups have avoided the reversal in death rates that is so striking among white US people.
Breaking it down
A more detailed breakdown of data showed that death rates have risen fastest among the least-educated white US citizens 鈥� those who haven鈥檛 progressed beyond high school to university. 鈥淓conomic gains are going to the top, and not to people with no more than a high-school education,鈥� says Deaton.
Meanwhile, differences in pension arrangements may help explain why Europeans in the same age bracket continue to fare well in comparison. In Europe, most pensions rely on employers investing contributions from employees into pension funds that later offer guaranteed payouts. In the US, employers simply buy stocks and shares with pension contributions and allocate these to employees when they retire.
鈥淚t means that in Europe, employers bear the financial risk, whereas in the US, individuals bear the risk,鈥� says Deaton. 鈥淥nce they鈥檝e retired, they have to sweat on the performance of their stocks and shares, and so their personal fate is at the mercy of the markets.鈥�
Journal reference: PNAS, DOI:
Image credit: Matt Champlin/Getty
