The mortality rate for middle-aged white Americans is rising, defying life

“Half a million people are dead who should not be dead”, Angus Deaton, the 2015 Nobel laureate in economics told my colleagues Lenny Bernstein and Joel Achenbach.

The overall death rate of white middle-aged Americans has increased in the past 15 years, mainly as a result of deaths related to drugs, alcohol, and suicide.

Recent data about people acquiring illness and developing disabilities may shed a light.

At this stage, one can only speculate as to the reasons behind the Case-Deaton findings.

It’s not clear why only middle-aged whites had such a rise. The tally is on par with the nation’s AIDS deaths, they added.

The researchers calculated that if the mortality rate for middle-aged white Americans had remained at their 1998 level, around 96,000 deaths could have been avoided between 1998-2013. This matched the average rate of decline in France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, as well as the average over all European Union countries.

For decades, death rates in the U.S. have been declining. The researchers, however, noted that if this holds true, then why do middle-aged people in other countries not exhibit the same reactions?

Saying the turnaround in the trend was “extraordinary”, Deaton and Case concluded that an additional 488,500 Americans passed away during the time frame that would have not died if the death rate had not reversed itself.

Similar patterns were observed among specific causes of death. In fact, the researchers have pointed towards mental health issues and addiction to drugs and alcohol to be the cause behind shortening lifespans. Prior to 1999, the mortality rate within that group had been falling steadily for decades. In that subgroup, death rates rose by 22% while they actually fell for those with a college education. That led them to the discovery of deaths from drug and alcohol poisoning. Obesity also increased for middle-aged Americans, but does not explain more than a fraction of the increases in morbidity registered over this period.

White Americans between the ages of 44 and 64 are in the middle of a deadly “epidemic” that researchers from Princeton University blame on drugs, alcohol, suicide and liver disease, including cirrhosis.

The researchers believe that the increase in death rate during the late 1990s is probably related to an increase in availability of certain prescription painkillers.

“We knew that suicides were going up”, he said.

In particular, the trend is most prevalent among 45 to 54-year-olds with no more than a high school education, something that is not seen in any other age group in the U.S.

The proportion of people who said they were in “serious psychological distress” also rose significantly, the research shows.

‘This is not automatic; if the epidemic is brought under control, its survivors may have a healthy old age. “Those now in midlife may be a ‘lost generation, ‘ whose future is less bright than those who preceded them”, they write.

That’s according to the authors of a new study that appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

For confidential support in the United States of America, call the National Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255.