#Study: American White’s Mortality Rates Rise for the First Time Since the Aids Epidemic

Apparently, this is unique to white Americans only. White people from other parts of the world are enjoying, long, fruitful, lives. But for some reason, here in America, white people are poisoning themselves with opiods, committing suidice and dying from cirrosis of the liver–due to alcohol abuse. If you do not view this as a societal failure, you’re living in a fucking dinosaur cave.

Here is the link to the full study.

Fig. 1 shows a cessation and reversal of the decline in midlife mortality for US white non-Hispanics after 1998. From 1978 to 1998, the mortality rate for US whites aged 45–54 fell by 2% per year on average, which matched the average rate of decline in the six countries shown, and the average over all other industrialized countries. After 1998, other rich countries’ mortality rates continued to decline by 2% a year. In contrast, US white non-Hispanic mortality rose by half a percent a year. No other rich country saw a similar turnaround. The mortality reversal was confined to white non-Hispanics; Hispanic Americans had mortality declines indistinguishable from the British (1.8% per year), and black non-Hispanic mortality for ages 45–54 declined by 2.6% per year over the period.

For deaths before 1989, information on Hispanic origin is not available, but we can calculate lives lost among all whites. For those aged 45–54, if the white mortality rate had held at its 1998 value, 96,000 deaths would have been avoided from 1999 to 2013, 7,000 in 2013 alone. If it had continued to fall at its previous (1979?1998) rate of decline of 1.8% per year, 488,500 deaths would have been avoided in the period 1999?2013, 54,000 in 2013. (Supporting Information provides details on calculations.)

This turnaround, as of 2014, is specific to midlife. All-cause mortality rates for white non-Hispanics aged 65–74 continued to fall at 2% per year from 1999 to 2013; there were similar declines in all other racial and ethnic groups aged 65–74. However, the mortality decline for white non-Hispanics aged 55–59 also slowed, declining only 0.5% per year over this period.

There was a pause in midlife mortality decline in the 1960s, largely explicable by historical patterns of smoking (13). Otherwise, the post-1999 episode in midlife mortality in the United States is both historically and geographically unique, at least since 1950. The turnaround is not a simple cohort effect; Americans born between 1945 and 1965 did not have particularly high mortality rates before midlife.

Fig. 2 presents the three causes of death that account for the mortality reversal among white non-Hispanics, namely suicide, drug and alcohol poisoning (accidental and intent undetermined), and chronic liver diseases and cirrhosis. All three increased year-on-year after 1998. Midlife increases in suicides and drug poisonings have been previously noted (14?–16). However, that these upward trends were persistent and large enough to drive up all-cause midlife mortality has, to our knowledge, been overlooked. For context, Fig. 2 also presents mortality from lung cancer and diabetes. The obesity epidemic has (rightly) made diabetes a major concern for midlife Americans; yet, in recent history, death from diabetes has not been an increasing threat. Poisonings overtook lung cancer as a cause of death in 2011 in this age group; suicide appears poised to do so.

Because I have a twisted mind, after reading this lovely piece of research, this song came to mind. Congrats to the government for swapping out the non-taxable crack-cocaine drug crisis for the taxed opiate pill varietal. At least we’re now collecting revenues off of the American drug addict.