Is Death Rate Really Up for Middle-Aged Whites?

In a much-discussed recent paper, economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton reported “a marked increase in the all-cause mortality of middle-aged white non-Hispanic men and women in the United States between 1999 and 2013. This change reversed decades of progress in mortality and was unique to the United States; no other rich country saw a similar turnaround.” During this period, the death rate among non-Hispanic white Americans between the ages of 45 and 54 increased by about 10 percent, from 380 to 415 per 100,000. To put it another way, of 1,000 people in this group, about 4 would be expected to die in the next year. Meanwhile, the death rates in several other rich countries continued their historic pattern of decline, falling by about 20 percent during this period. The mortality rate among this age group in Britain, for example, is 270 per 100,000. In the United States, Hispanics and blacks also had sharply declining death rates. It was only middle-aged whites who saw the increase.