Source: NPR
A 2015 study found death rates were rising since 1999 among middle-aged white Americans.
A Follow up study that was recently published in Brookings Papers on Economic Activity found that lack of well-paying jobs for whites without college degrees caused pain, distress and social dysfunction to build up over time, which led to an increase in “deaths of despair by suicide, drugs and alcohol.”
The death rate for white people between the ages of 40 and 50 increased by half percent every year from 1999 to 2013, the study found.
Furthermore, the study found that the increase in death rates did not apply for well-off white Americans.
“We are beginning to thread a story in that it’s possible that [the trend in increasing deaths is] consistent with the labor market collapsing for people with less than a college degree,” said Anne Case, economist at Princeton University, and lead researcher of the study.
Read full story at: NPR