Certain groups would have you believe the
scourge of black initiated violence is responsible for virtually every negative
trend in this country. This applies, especially,
to developments that lead to increased mortality rates. If you are a consumer of Right Wing talk
radio, or cable news, or dare I say, a number of the GOP Presidential
candidates, you will hear it suggested that blacks, particularly those
ensconced in urban areas are engaged in wonton, drug use, gang violence, and
random killing sprees. I sometimes
wonder if all of what they say is true, how could there possibly be anyone left
to buy drugs, join gangs, and execute the incalculable numbers of murders we
are constantly reminded occur on a nearly daily basis.
Two Princeton economists, and Nobel Laureate, Angus
Deaton and his wife, Anne Case, received international attention for their
research, which was published earlier this week in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
According to the study, since 1999, we have been experiencing a
significant spike in the death rate for a large group of middle-aged whites in
the United States. The rise in death
rates was accompanied by an increase in illness.
However, their work was not immediately
received with robust approval. Before
presenting their work to PNAS, they submitted it to two prestigious medical
journals, both of which rejected the study.
First, they tried to get it published in the Journal of the American Medical Association
(JAMA).
According to Deaton, who was interviewed while attending a conference,
sponsored by Princeton University, on Ebola and global public health in Dublin:
“We got
it back almost instantaneously. It was
almost like the e-mail had bounced. We
got it back within hours.”
Next, Deaton and Case tried the New England
Journal of Medicine (NEJM), after framing their
work in the form of a two-page “Perspective” summarizing the alarming trend
they had discovered in government mortality statistics. Two tries, two rejection notices. According to Deaton, the NEJM said that their
work does not explain why the historically anomalous surge in mortality
occurred. He compared that response to
calling the fire department to report that your house is on fire:
“And
they say, ‘Well, what caused the fire?’ And
you say, ‘I don’t know,’ and they say, ‘Well, we can’t send the fire brigade
until you can tell us what caused the fire.’”
Staff members at both Journals were reluctant
to offer any details surrounding their respective responses to the study. Ms. Jennifer Zeis, media relations manager
for the NEJM, said via email that the NEJM could not comment on the fate of any
submissions because “The publication process is confidential.” Similarly, Jim Michalski, a spokesman for
JAMA, also cited the journal’s confidentiality policy. “We can neither confirm nor deny whether an
author has submitted a manuscript for review, or why a manuscript may have been
rejected, also conveyed through an email.
The study’s findings apply to the mortality
rate for white men and women ages 45-54 with less than a college
education. The death rates for this
group, based on the results of the study increased markedly between 1999 and
2013. The most likely drivers for this
increase are thought to be problems with legal and illegal drugs, alcohol, and
suicide. Deaton said of the causality:
“Drugs
and alcohol, and suicide…are clearly the proximate cause. Half a million people are dead who should not
be dead. That is about 40 times the
Ebola stats. You’re getting up there
with HIV-AIDS.”
Prior to the time frame cited in the study,
death rates for the group had dropped steadily, and at an even faster pace. Historically, increases in mortality rates
for any large demographic group in advanced nations, which “Exceptional America
must surely be, have been virtually unheard of, with the notable exception of Russian
men after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Undoubtedly, this overarching trend narrative is at least in part, the
reason that JAMA and the NEJM were less than embracing of the Case’s study and
findings.
Since at least 1970, Americans and residents of
other wealthy countries have generally enjoyed longer and healthier lives, as
smoking has declined, better treatments have been developed and preventive
measures and lifestyles changes have had a substantial impact.
The findings of this study could have
far-reaching implications as the surviving members of this sizable population
segment continue toward retirement and Medicare eligibility. A more sickly population, less able to
prepare for the costs associated with old age will place an increasing burden
on both society at-large and federal programs.
Such a reversal has not been seen in blacks or
Hispanics or among Europeans. The study
points specifically to a surge in overdoses from opioid medication and heroin,
liver disease and other problems that stem from alcohol abuse, and suicides.
Upon reflection, Deaton noted that he
understands the related research will be subjected to political commentary,
including that of a conservative
Web site’s analysis that blamed President Obama for a trend that
began during Bill Clinton Presidency.
According to his resulting analysis:
“There is a widening between people at the top
and the people who have a ho-hum education and they’re not tooled to compete in
a technology economy. …Not only are
these people struggling economically, but they’re experiencing this health
catastrophe too, so they’re being hammered twice.”
Jonathan
Skinner of Dartmouth College, another economist who reviewed the study for PNAS
and co-authored a commentary that appears with it, used very similar words to summarize
the findings:
“An increasingly pessimistic view of their
financial future combined with the increased availability of opioid drugs has
created this kind of perfect storm of adverse outcomes.”
Skinner also
went on to say:
“This is the first indicator that the plane has
crashed. I don’t know what’s going on,
but the plane has definitely crashed.
“High school graduates [and] high school
dropouts [are] 40 percent of the population.
It’s not just the 10 percent who didn’t finish high school. It’s a much
bigger group.”
Deaton and
Case examined death rates for other developed nations, as well as for U.S.
blacks and Hispanics as they continued their steady decline of recent
decades. Whites in other age groups
between 30 and 64, and more educated whites also had lower death rates. However, the other age groups did also
experience substantially higher death rates from drug and alcohol overdoses, suicides,
chronic liver disease, and cirrhosis of the liver.
David Weir, director of the health and
retirement study at the Institute for Social Research at the University of
Michigan, noted that while the death rates for African Americans continues to
be greater than that for whites, the reversal among whites is shocking because
of the advantages they enjoy. He added:
“Typically,
socioeconomic circumstances gang up on African Americans, who have lower
education, lower incomes, and race all working against them. In this case, that’s not happening.”
Weir surmised that economic insecurity, the
decay of communities and the breakdown of families probably have had some
impact on death and illness rates, in addition to the nation’s opioid epidemic
and the factors the authors identified.
Yet, he counters, the study clearly shows they are not the result of
diseases such as lung cancer or diabetes, which are declining and increasing
slowly, respectively. He interjected:
“I think
it has to have something to do [with] the pain underlying it, both physical and
psychic. That is the age when people have their midlife crisis…I think it has
to do with that stage of life, and physical ailments do start to accumulate at
that age. This paper really is a
question, not an answer.”
Angus Deaton was awarded the Nobel Prize for
his work on individual
consumption choices. He has long studied
measures of well-being, health and pain. He and Case authored a paper in June
that found reports of physical pain “are strongly predictive of suicide in many
contexts” and that reports of pain are increasing among middle-aged Americans.
Their
findings have been corroborated by other research, including a report from the
National Heroin Task Force established by the Justice Department, which puts the
number of overdose deaths from legal and illegal drugs at 110 every day. The
heroin death toll has quadrupled in the decade that ended in 2013, according to
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A study in
the journal JAMA Psychiatry last year reported that 90 percent of the people
who tried heroin for the first time in the last decade were white.
Three-quarters said they were introduced to heroin through the use of
prescription drugs.
In January,
the CDC reported that an average of six people die every day because of alcohol
poisoning and that 76 percent are ages 35 to 64. Three-quarters are men. But just last week, researchers reported that
the U.S. death rate for all causes declined 43 percent between 1969 and 2013,
from about 1,279 per 100,000 people to about 730. The rate of death caused by
strokes, heart disease and cancer all declined significantly, researchers
reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
As you
reconcile the veritable cornucopia of data that support the findings in this
post, do not fail to appropriately integrate and consider the degree to which these
maladies precede the Age of Obama, as well as the disproportionate involvement
of, and impact on white folks rather than black folks. Why?
Because the next time you hear some ill-informed member of the media,
the GOP, or perhaps your family spout off about either the role of President
Obama in the decline of life as we know it, or the failure of blacks to respect
life and authority, play this study like a high trump card in a game of Spades,
complete with theatrics and histrionics.
So there you have it…“More White People Are Dying:Newsflash - It’s Not President Obama’s Fault!”
I’m done; holla
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