[Vision2020] 'Deaths of Despair' bare America's troubled soul

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of today's (August 17, 2017) Spokesman-Review with thanks to Nick Gier.

---------------------------------

His View: 'Deaths of Despair' bare America's troubled soul

By Nick Gier

Many Americans are experiencing an increase in mortality and morbidity, which means higher rates of disease. Starting in 1998, white Americans aged 45-54 began dying earlier, ending a centurylong, worldwide trend of higher life expectancy.

Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, who have published two studies on these trends, have called them "deaths of despair."

Most dramatic is that while black Americans previously had a higher mortality rate than middle-age white Americans without a college degree, the latter's rate is now 30 percent higher.

Despite many difficulties for some, Hispanics join their black brothers and sisters in living longer. Their workforce participation rate is also higher than their white counterparts.

Having a college education is a key factor. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Americans with a bachelor's degree live nine years longer on average. With the decline of good paying blue collar jobs, more jobs require post-secondary training and degrees. Those with a college degree have more successful marriages and better health, and they have more stable lives in general.

Even women without college degrees are coping better in this new economy. They are more engaged in their community and churches, while many similarly educated, unemployed men stay at home, watching TV/videos, surfing the internet and self-medicating with alcohol and opioids. Here is where many of the deaths of despair occur.

Suicide rates are also much higher in the 45-54 age range.

As Anne Case says: "These people kill themselves slowly with alcohol or drugs, or quickly with a gun. For people aged 50-55, for example, those rates went from 40 per 100,000 to 80 per 100,000 since the turn of the century."

The national rate for all ages is nearly eight times less (12.6 per 100,000; 19.5 for men versus 5.8 for women).

Opioid addiction and deaths due to overdose have made the situation far worse. According to the CDC, the rate of death from prescription opioid overdoses more than quadrupled between 1999 and 2015, leading to the deaths of 183,000 people (mostly white).

Case and Deaton also discovered that those without a college education were drawn to evangelical churches, which emphasize an individualism that makes "people feel increased responsibility for their own successes or failures." Many of these churches preach a self-isolating "prosperity gospel," which increases the desperation of those who have only experienced failure.

Shannon Monnat, a rural sociologist at Penn State, has found that counties that have high rates of premature death voted overwhelmingly for Trump.

As Monnat observes: "Some people turn to self-medicating, and some people turn to another kind of fix, which may be voting for a candidate that is proposing some radical change: burning the place down."

These Trump voters have had their wish fulfilled. Trump has burned bridges internationally as well as domestically. Business people are leaving his advisory boards (one now disbanded), his own Republicans bristle at his insults, and the GOP Congress has accomplished very little.

Trump supported a health care bill that would have gutted programs that help those who are most prone to premature death. These people should be grateful to former President Barack Obama for the Medicaid coverage that is still in place.

While president, Obama proposed legislation that would have provided $54 billion for retraining Rust Belt workers for the new economy, the same sort of programs that have succeeded in Canada and Europe.

American conservatives say that European welfare states infantilize their citizens and make them completely dependent on the state. They claim that Europeans have lost their souls because of "statist" policies, but with America's "deaths of despair," these critics should realize that the really troubled souls are right here in America.

---------------------------------

Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .

"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)
http://www.MoscowCares.com
  
Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20170817/f34d0b8f/attachment.html>