The death rate for white middle-aged Americans with less than a college education is rising at a "startling rate", the Washington Post and other newspapers reported today.
The mortality rate for white men and women ages 45-54 with less than a college education increased markedly between 1999 and 2013, most likely because of problems with legal and illegal drugs, alcohol and suicide, the researchers concluded. Before then, death rates for that group dropped steadily, and at a faster pace. The research by two Princeton University economists, Dr. Anne Case and her husband Dr. Angus Deaton, 2015 Nobel laureate in economics, link the "sharp increase" in mortality to drugs and alcohol, suicide, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis. This turnaround in mortality reverses decades of progress, the researchers write, and the same pattern is not seen in other rich countries, nor is it seen among African Americans or Hispanics in the United States."“Half a million people are dead who should not be dead,” Deaton said.