In a strange twist a recent study has found that mortality rates in white middle-aged Americans has seen a startling spike. The strangest thing about all this? It's not diabetes or heart disease. Middle class American men, in other words, are the epitome of that #sadboy life: they're literally dying of despair.
In a study published in the New York Times by Nobel Laureate Angus Deaton and economist Anne Case, the two discovered a notable trend in rising mortality rates among white middle-aged men in the U.S.—whereas other groups across Canada, Europe, and Australia (independent of race or ethnicity) are living much longer. Between 1999 and 2013, there has been a 22 percent increase in death rates among white men ages 45- to 54-years-old. Or, as the Times put it, "134 deaths per 100,000 people from 1999 to 2014."
So if not the typical perpetrators of white male mortality, then what? (And this is where it gets weird.) The study found that the causes of the deaths were suicide, alcohol and drug abuse—notably, heroin and prescription opiates, the usage demographic for which is currently primarily white—and chronic liver diseases and cirrhosis.
So significant is this uptick in white male deaths that the study's authors have likened it to the AIDS epidemic in terms of scope. "The mortality reversal observed in this period bears a resemblance to the mortality decline slowdown in the United States during the height of the AIDS epidemic, which took the lives of 650,000 Americans," they write in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. What the hell is happening in white America?
Head over to the Times to read the full scoop.
