Capitalism and mortality: Death rate soars for middle-aged US workers [View all]

[TexasTowelie]

A study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences documents a sharp rise in the mortality rate for white, middle-aged working-class Americans over the past fifteen years. The report’s authors are Nobel laureate Angus Deaton and Anne Case, both economists at Princeton University.

Their calculations show that the rising death rate since 1999 for this segment of the population translates into 96,000 more deaths than if the mortality rate had remained flat. Had the rate continued on its declining trajectory for the period 1978-1998, the authors state, there would be 500,000 more people alive today in the United States.

“Only HIV/AIDS in contemporary times has done anything like this,” commented Deaton.

The increase in the mortality rate is due mainly to a dramatic rise in the rate of deaths from suicide, drug abuse and alcoholism—all expressions of social and personal crisis.

Read more: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/11/04/pers-n04.html