'Deaths Of Despair' Are On The Rise Among Working-Class White Americans, New Research Suggests

Breitbart ^ | 3-23-207 | Kevin Loria

[blam]

In the US, death rates for middle-aged white working-class Americans are bucking a global trend.

Instead of falling as treatments for killers like heart disease and cancer improve, death rates for white Americans without a college degree are on the rise, largely driven by increased rates of drug overdose, suicide, and alcohol use.

These are considered "deaths of despair," Princeton professors Anne Case and Angus Deaton write in a new Brookings Paper on Economic Activity that describes the trend. The study follows up on Case and Deaton's previous work, which caused a stir in 2015 when it first revealed these surprising numbers.

In the years since, these changes have "continued unabated," Case and Deaton write.

Death rates from drug overdose, suicide, and alcohol-related liver disease have risen for non-Hispanic white men and women without college degrees between the ages of 25 and 64, the new paper suggests. At the same time, progress in reducing deaths from cancer and heart disease has slowed for these groups (it's stopped all together in the case of heart disease).

According to the researchers, the trend started in the Southwest and spread across the US.

(snip)

[shhrubbery!]

Agree with what you said. Cancer can be a very complicated disease.

My point is just that alcohol is very carcinogenic, even in 'moderate' doses.

I think most people don't know this. There is so much social pressure to drink, and so much alcohol-industry marketing that makes drinking look cool and fun.

And then there are the multitudinous articles trumpeting the purported health benefits of some kinds of alcoholic drinks, e.g. red wine. Later studies showing that these health claims don't pan out, don't get nearly as much attention.

[RinaseaofDs]

It is policy. Leads to divorce, and it is downhill from there.

[RinaseaofDs]

Here here.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/alcohol/alcohol-fact-sheet

Even the NCI is “all over the map” on this. For example:

“...an estimated 3.5 percent of all cancer deaths in the United States (about 19,500 deaths) were alcohol related.”

This is a frustrating statistic, because it is just of *mortality*, not *all* cancers, many of which can be treated, or even cured. And mortality is also strongly influenced by poverty and education: that is, an uneducated hobo alcoholic is far more likely to die of a treatable cancer than is a wealthier person who gets good medical care.

Beyond that, cancers vary a *lot* on their mortality risk. For example, liver and pancreatic cancer are very deadly, because they are “silent”, until they are too late to cure, and are also fast moving.

“Existing evidence supports the link between alcohol consumption and cancer at seven sites: oropharynx (mouth and throat), larynx (voice box), oesophagus (gullet), liver, colon (bowel), rectum and female breast.

“The strength of the association differed by the site of the cancer. It was strongest for the mouth, throat and oesophagus, with the review suggesting that someone who drinks more than 50g of alcohol a day is four to seven times more likely to develop these types of cancer compared to someone who doesn’t drink.

“The link was comparatively weaker for colorectal, liver and breast cancer. The review suggests someone who drinks more than 50g of alcohol a day is 1.5 times more likely to develop these types of cancer compared to someone who doesn’t drink.”