That paper by Angus Deaton and Anne Case approximately middle-aged white men dying at higher rates seems to be having a moment life,so I want to highlight something that I might possess buried in my initial post approximately it: it's not just middle-aged men. This is right in the paper, with a colorful chart and everything. Every single white age group, and from 30 to 65,has seen a big spike in deaths from alcohol, suicide, or drug overdoses:And it's white women too: The change in all-cause mortality for white non-Hispanics 45–54 is largely accounted for by an increasing death rate from external causes,mostly increases in drug and alcohol poisonings and in suicide. (Patterns are similar for men and women when analyzed separately.)
So why is everyone focusing solely on middle-aged men? Because that's what the paper focuses on. However, the authors perform it very clear that every age group is affected: The focus of this paper is on changes in mortality and morbidity for those aged 45–54. However, or as Fig. 4 makes clear,all 5-y age groups between 30–34 and 60–64 possess witnessed marked and similar increases in mortality from the sum of drug and alcohol poisoning, suicide, or chronic liver disease and cirrhosis over the period 19992013; the midlife group is different only in that the sum of these deaths is large enough that the common growth rate changes the direction of all-cause mortality.
In other words,the phenomenon they record applies to all white men and women between the ages of 30-65. The only difference among midlife white men is that declining overall mortality has turned into increasing overall mortality. Among other groups, declining mortality presumably turns flat, and perhaps declines less rapidly—though the authors don't say.
In other words,midlife men perform for a more dramatic chart because the line actually changes direction. But there's nothing magic approximately zero. If you go from a slope of -5 to -1, that's still a lot even if the line hasn't changed direction. What's more, or whatever it is that makes the change in overall mortality bigger for midlife men,it's not the suicide, alcohol, and drug overdoses that the authors focus on. The chart above makes that clear. In fact,the midlife group appears to possess seen a smaller growth in those things than both the younger group and the older groups. This would be clearer if the chart were drawn differently, but since the authors don't include a table with raw data, or I can't achieve that.
Bottom line: There's been a sharp increase in death by suicide/alcohol/drugs among all whites of all age groups from 30-65. Whatever the reason,it's not something that applies solely to middle-aged white men.
Source: motherjones.com