Here’s the kernel of a rather lugubrious report at the Washington Post by Joel Achenbach:
The all-cause death rate — meaning deaths per 100,000 people — rose 6 percent from 2010 to 2017 among working-age people in the United States.
Men overall have higher all-cause mortality than women, but the report pulls out some disturbing trends. Women are succumbing to diseases once far more common among men, even as men continue to die in greater absolute numbers.
The risk of death from drug overdoses increased 486 percent for midlife women between 1999 and 2017; the risk increased 351 percent for men in that same period. Women also experienced a bigger relative increase in risk of suicide and alcohol-related liver disease.
Increasing midlife mortality began among whites in 2010, Hispanics in 2011 and African Americans in 2014, the study states.
My answer to the question in my title is that it’s been a long time coming. When the pursuit of pleasure or, worse, numbness replaces everything else that people have used to bring meaning to their lives, why should we be surprised that they’re overdosing, drinking themselves to death, obese, or killing themselves?
I think that what we’re seeing is a loss of hope, particularly among the young. The groundwork was laid decades ago for the dramatic loss of hope we’re seeing. The Vietnam War. Watergate. Malaise. Financialization. Globalization. Mass immigration. Offshoring. Information coming at them faster than they can process it. Decline of traditional living arrangements. In 1968 more than 80% of people between the ages of 25 and 35 lived with their spouses. Now half that percentage do. When you include cohabitation the total percentage rises to 54%—still a dramatic change.
For most young people rather than preparing themselves for a better job increased formal education has loaded them with debt. The reason is simple. We aren’t creating enough jobs that require more education and they’re in competition with people from all over the world for those jobs and located all over the world. That journalism degree? It’s worthless. More people graduate with journalism degrees every year than have jobs in journalism. Prospective employers don’t even look at the thousands of resumes they receive. They winnow them using emotionless software for just the qualifications they think they want before they even start interviewing. When interviewed the HR department managers may say they want the ability to communicate but that only applies after they’ve limited those they’ll actually interview to just those with the nominal qualifications they’re seeking.
It is much easier to tear down than to build up. We have been tearing down for decades. Building back up will take even longer even if we had the will to do it.
Update
The paper on which the WaPo article was based may be found here. The findings from its abstract are:
Between 1959 and 2016, US life expectancy increased from 69.9 years to 78.9 years but declined for 3 consecutive years after 2014. The recent decrease in US life expectancy culminated a period of increasing cause-specific mortality among adults aged 25 to 64 years that began in the 1990s, ultimately producing an increase in all-cause mortality that began in 2010. During 2010-2017, midlife all-cause mortality rates increased from 328.5 deaths/100 000 to 348.2 deaths/100 000. By 2014, midlife mortality was increasing across all racial groups, caused by drug overdoses, alcohol abuse, suicides, and a diverse list of organ system diseases. The largest relative increases in midlife mortality rates occurred in New England (New Hampshire, 23.3%; Maine, 20.7%; Vermont, 19.9%) and the Ohio Valley (West Virginia, 23.0%; Ohio, 21.6%; Indiana, 14.8%; Kentucky, 14.7%). The increase in midlife mortality during 2010-2017 was associated with an estimated 33 307 excess US deaths, 32.8% of which occurred in 4 Ohio Valley states.
A couple of points to make:
Did the study cherry-pick the years they wanted to survey to prove their point? I’d like to see what the figures were for similar periods post-WWII. Also would like to see the trend from 2017-2019, if there is data available.
A lot of the malaise was deliberately encouraged by both inside and outside actors for their own purposes (the USSR being one of the prime movers). Demonization of squares, straights, and work ethic; glamorization of ‘alternative lifestyles’ (I.e. flauntingly in your face sexual and moral deviancy); the promotion of moral equivalency (yes, The Han Empire killed millions in the Great Leap Forward, but look at we did to the American Indians! And don’t even talk about the Crusades!), full-throated denigration of the American Experiment for failure to achieve the critics’ idea of perfection (Thanks Howard Zinn and all those who promoted his history as the unvarnished truth), and so on.
I think the US has the will to rebuild or at least stay the decay. Optimism is out there. It’s the ruling classes that for the most part lack the desire, so they figure ‘get it while the getting’s good before the deluge’. Promotion of barbarism and atavism for personal gain.
You also might have mentioned China’s fentanyl trade in the U. S. It’s an interesting sort of reversal of U. S. and British opium trade in China in the 19th century which produced a series of wars, one of which resulted in Hong Kong’s being leased to the British. The British had 90% of the trade in opium in China, the U. S. the other 10%.
You can list lots of changes, and you did, but I dont think we really know which if these, if any, caused the increase in mortality. This is in the middle aged range and some of these are things that affect young people more. Maybe its just smaller family size and high divorce rate so that more people in late life live alone. Maybe its just better access to more deadly drugs. I hope someone is looking at these ideas and trying to sort it out. There have been multiple studies on this topic now, I think Angus Deaton started them, so I think it is real. I think that until we have some real causes identified people will use this to just talk about whatever social issues/changes they dont like.
Steve
Dave: Thanks for the update and the inclusion of the statistics. There are too many articles out there making bold statements without anything to back them up.
Opioids: It never even crossed my mind to mention the effect of opioids that have slain tens of thousands of people in this country, especially white males. It should have considering I have an addict in the family. I agree it is an interesting reversal of the Opium Trade (which certain NY First 400 families benefited from, notably the Delanos), although I suspect revenge was not a primary motive in that creation of that particular export stream.
Statistics: Again the stats cited end in 2016 and 2017. We shall hopefully learn in the next year or two whether these trends have reversed in the last couple of years.